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THE ORIENT QUESTION 

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW 



THE 

ORIENT QUESTION 

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW 



BY 
PRINCE LAZAROVICH-HREBELIANOVICH 



ILLUSTRATED WITH MAPS 



J 




NEW YORK 

DUFFIELD & COMPANY 

1913 



'^l^y *2* 






Copyright, 1913, by 
DUFFIELD & COMPANY 



©CLAa54350 



To those heroes who fell In the libera- 
tion of the old lands from the Turk, 
whether among the regular and auxiliary 
forces of the Allies, or those Haiduks, 
Klephts, and Comitadjis of the Insurrec- 
tions who fought hoping only in a distant 
future. Counting as nothing unutterable 
hardship, they won victories unsurpassed 
in the world's annals, giving their lives as 
Christ did, that others might live. 

The loving remembrance of their glory 
will be chanted forever, and their noblest 
monuments will be the creations of the 
genius of their race which, in splendour 
and might will now arise in the home-lands 
freed from blight and consecrated anew 
to bless the Earth. 



FOREWORD 

This book is based on lectures which I 
delivered at Leland Stanford Junior Uni- 
versity, California, U. S. A., just prior to 
the outbreak of the Balkan war in the au- 
tumn of 19 1 2, at the request of President 
David Starr Jordan, whose proposal to 
study the subjects of war and peace by 
scientific methods promises a trustworthy 
basis for the formation of practical con- 
clusions. 

The title of the lectures was " Servian 
Unification a Factor in World Peace." 
They included a consideration of the vari- 
ous international problems of the Near and 
Far East and their relation to the interests 
centred in the Balkan regions. 

It was not my good fortune to have my 
proffered services as a soldier in the field 
required by the Servian Government. 
That restraint caused me profound sorrow, 



Foreword 

as since the founding of the first Mace- 
donian Committee in 1886 for the freeing 
of the Christians from the Turk in the 
old Serb-lands, I have devoted the greater 
part of my life to that cause. 

When I realised that circumstances 
made it impossible for me to take part 
with the armies in this most glorious cam- 
paign I decided to remain in America and 
speak on the Balkan situation, which I 
have done before Universities and other 
Educational Institutions. 

Lazarovich-Hrebelianovich. 
March, 20, 19 13. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. (General Considerations ...... i 

11. Near Eastern Problem 76 

A. General Survey ^(i 

B. Islam 82 

C. Local Aspect of the Near Eastern 

Problem 106 

D. International Aspect of the Near 

Eastern Problem 172 

III. The Far Eastern and Pacific Situation 202 

IV. The American Problems 249 

V. European Problems of International Im- 
portance 264 

A. The Anglo-German Situation . . . 264 

B. The Hapsburg Problem .... 289 
Appendix : 

A. A letter to the Servian People pub- 
lished in the Belgrade and other 
Servian Newspapers, in March, 
1912 317 

B. 

i|. Citations ^ from Memorandum of 
Macedonian Committee to British 
Government, November, 1903 . . 325 

2. Citations from Memorandum of 
Macedonian Committee to King 
Edward and British Government, 
Spring, 1904 . . . . . . .333 

C. Danube-Aegean Canal Project, Esti- 

mates, Surveys, etc., as submitted 
to Servian Government in 1909 . 349 



MAPS 

FACING 
PAGE 

1. Map of the World 24 

2. Map of the Near East, having the Suez- 

Canal as center 150 

3. Map of the Far East 210 

4 Map of America, having the Panama Canal 

as center 250 

5. Distribution of the different races in Austria- 

Hungary and the Balkans 290 

6. Map showing the Serb-inhabited Block of 

Territory 303 

7. The existing Inland Waterways of Central 

Europe navigable for boats of 1000 tons, 
and the Projected Danube-Aegean Canal 
Appendix 355 



THE ORIENT QUESTION 

CHAPTER I 

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 

THE Immutable, underlying factors of 
the Balkan Problem constitute It an 
Integral and Important part of the world 
problems formed by the conflicting or In- 
ter-mutual Interests which vibrate between 
Suez and Panama. 

The Balkan Peninsula In Its relation to 
Suez forms the most Important key from 
the Occident to the Orient and the vast 
Oriental markets. Apart from those far- 
reaching and basic elements of the Balkan 
situation, the problems which are now be- 
ing fought out not only on the Macedo- 
nian battle-fields, but In the Council Cham- 
bers of the world would have but restricted 
and local import. 

I 



The Orient Question 

Therefore a true understanding of the 
Balkan situation calls for some considera- 
tion of the so-called world aims, aspira- 
tions and interests of the great nations 
and the points where those aims converge 
and conflict. What is seen in the Balkan 
Problem to-day is not alone a Serb, a Bul- 
gar, a Greek, or a Turk, but also a Ger- 
man, an Englishman, a Russian. 

A real and definitive settlement of the 
Balkan question is possible as the result 
of the campaigns of the Balkan Allies, but 
such a definitive solution of that question 
is possible only on the basis of the " Bal- 
kans for the Balkans." That result 
would bring calm to one of the great 
storm-centres of Europe, where perennial 
strife and uncertainty must be pregnant 
with peril to the world. Incidentally, 
such a firm settlement would mean civi- 
lisation and progress to millions of peo- 
ple inhabiting those lands. But, what- 
ever the outcome on the battle-field, it is 
to be feared that the peace-settlement un- 

2 



General Considerations 

der outside pressure will not be a settle- 
ment In the Interests of peace, Insuring sta- 
bility, but that a make-shift will be arrived 
at leaving the situation full of open ques- 
tions, door-ways through which a north- 
ern conqueror shall be able at a convenient 
hour to stride eastward and southward to 
Suez and to the attainment of that world 
mastery proclaimed In the inscriptions 
found on the palaces of the Hapsburgs — ■ 
" Austria Est Imperare Orbl Unlverso." 

The present war is the last episode or 
last phase of a struggle which was begun 
by the Ottoman Turks five hundred years 
ago when they Invaded Europe and over- 
threw the then existing Servian, Bulgarian, 
and Greek States. In driving back the 
Turk to-day the Allies do not enter the 
land as conquerors, they are going home. 

A nation never loses Its sovereignty. 
Individuals, bound together In community 
by ties of blood, language and traditions 
forming a nation, have the Inherent right 

3 



The Orient Question 

to choose their form of government, the 
right to mould their own destiny, the right 
to create guarantees to Hfe, happiness and 
virtue. The right to live, to be good and 
to be happy is the inalienable birthright 
of the individual human being. To guar- 
antee the full exercise of these rights to the 
individual is the duty of the nation. So 
too, has it the duty to demand and exact 
general recognition of those inalienable 
rights. A government which fails in that 
regard has lost its claim to existence, and 
the individual, the ultimate unit forming 
the nation has the right of recall, to be 
enforced, by peaceful means if possible, 
or, if need be, by violence — the right of 
revolution. 

Conquest does not abolish the sover- 
eignty of a nation. That sovereignty Is 
only held in abeyance while the rule of the 
conqueror lasts, and remains In abeyance 
only so long as the mlHtant force of the 
conqueror is strong enough to prevent its 
assertion. It is the right and the duty of 

4 



General Considerations 

a subjugated nation to revolt against and 
overthrow its conqueror. In that militant 
action lies the proof of its morality as a 
nation and of the honesty of its compo- 
nent Individuals. Instance of this is fur- 
nished in the history of every conquered 
nation. Vice and corruption prepare for 
and invite conquest — vice and corruption 
maintain a nation In subjection. 

The Balkan peoples Inhabiting the lands 
which had been over-run and held in forci- 
ble subjection by the Turk proved their 
mettle by remaining In Insurrection either 
latent or active according to opportunity 
during several hundred years. Over 
these lands for five centuries hovered the 
Balkan vulture and multiplied for there 
was food for him; there was an endless 
cry of battle, an endless groan of the op- 
pressed and tortured — an endless death- 
moan. The sign of mastership of the wild 
hordes of Islam was massacre unavenged 
by Christendom. Where the arts of peace 
had flourished, where material and moral 

5 



The Orient Question 

well-being and learning had existed, for 
five hundred years the Turks spread waste 
and darkness. 

Slowly one by one the Balkan peoples 
were able to partially free themselves and 
re-constitute part of their ancient States. 

Montenegro, a remnant of the old Ser- 
vian Empire, was never entirely conquered 
by the Ottomans. 

In the dawn of the Nineteenth Century, 
following massacres of Servians by the 
Turks in the Pashalik of Belgrade the 
sturdy mountaineer Karageorge, in 1804, 
headed a revolution and freed that part of 
what had been Servia, followed by another 
mountaineer, Milosh Obrenovich. After 
eleven years of war the modern principal- 
ity — later the Kingdom of Servia was 
founded. In 1821, after Turkish massa- 
cres of Greeks, the standard of revolt was 
raised in Greece and in 1830 the modern 
Kingdom of Greece was founded. In 
1878, Russia, after the Bulgarian atroci- 
ties, swept the Turks from the old Bul- 

6 



General Considerations 

garlan lands and created modern Bulgaria. 
These four States, now the allied powers, 
were only fragments of their old territo- 
ries. In European Turkey the Ottoman 
still held sway over their brethren — the 
Serb, the Bulgar, the Greek. 

What is being witnessed to-day by the 
world in the re-entering into possession of 
their old lands by the Balkan Nations, is 
the final tearing up of the one-sided con- 
tract made by the Ottoman Turk for the 
Balkan Nations, when the Turks as con- 
querors overthrew them and imposed on 
them their rule. That war is the contest 
between sovereignties, the one legitimate, 
the other imposed by usurpation. 

The idea of world peace has entered 
vividly into the conceptions and even into 
the militant movements of the present 
time. Many minds have thrilled with the 
question as to whether the human race may 
not have entered the age when the sword 
is to be fused into the ploughshare, and 

7 



The Orient Question 

the lamb lie down in peace with the lion. 
It is hoped that war can be made rare or 
perchance with the evolution of a higher 
human nature, eliminated. The eyes of 
faith which look forward afar to that 
period of a higher level of humanity, be- 
hold, too, the ehmination of another kind 
of war, one intimately at the base of the 
armed strife between nations, namely the 
war between the " haves " and *' have- 
nots," when starvation and the misery of- 
economic slavery shall have disappeared. 

The matter of peace should be studied 
with scientific method. There must be 
examination of data and conclusions based 
as nearly as possible, if not on experiments, 
at least on human experience. 

World peace as a practical achievement 
cannot be approached in our day by rob- 
bing peoples of the conceptions of self- 
defence, but by the establishment of 
equilibrium between the interests of na- 
tions and the calming and eradication of 
storm-centres. In this way Germany and 

8 



General Considerations 

Italy for example, which, for hundreds of 
years as weak and dismembered communi- 
ties, were the battle-fields of Europe, have 
within the space of a single generation, 
through their unification, become power- 
ful States, and within their boundaries 
the old weak and disrupted conditions, 
representing a kind of moral vacuum, 
drawing to themselves the inrushing expan- 
sive forces of their ambitious and stronger 
neighbours, have disappeared, so making 
serenity in a centre where storms were 
wont to gather. Conditions similar in that 
regard to those which existed in Italy and 
Germany prior to their unification as well 
as others peculiar to Turkish misrule have 
long existed in the Balkan Peninsula, mak- 
ing that part of the world a centre of con- 
tinual disturbance and therefore danger- 
ous to general peace. The unification and 
confederation of the several peoples of the 
Balkans in a free and independent forma- 
tion will eradicate the causes of disturb- 
ance in that centre. On page 728 of the 

9 



The Orient Question 

second volume of " The Servian People, 
Their Past Glories, and Their Destiny," ^ 
published two years prior to the present 
war, occur the following words : " All 
the lessons to be drawn from history would 
indicate to ordinary political sagacity that 
in the unification of each of the Balkan 
races, lies the solution of the Near East- 
ern Question. The unification of the 
Serbs, the Bulgars, the Roumanians, and 
Greeks into homogeneous entities would be 
the most potent factor in any approach to 
intelligent co-operation for individual de- 
fence and development." 

The vital result of the present war, Im- 
portant thereby to the world as a peace 
factor, Is precisely that unification of the 
several Balkan States: — The Serbs and 
Montenegrins liberating from Turkish oc- 
cupation their old lands and unifying with 
their co-natlonals who form the population 

1 The Servian People, Their Past Glories and 
Their Destiny, by Prince and Princess Lazarovich- 
Hrebelianovich, New York, Ch. Scribner & Sons; 
London, V^erner Laurie. 

lO 



General Considerations 

of those lands, the Bulgarians, doing the 
same in adjacent territories inhabited by 
Bulgars, and the Greeks, re-acquiring old 
Greek inhabited lands. So their leaguing 
together permanently for common eco- 
nomic interests and foreign relations be- 
comes possible for the first time in modern 
days and constitutes a new Balkan Power 
strong enough to defend the territorial in- 
tegrity and the national interests of each 
and all. 

A live man must fight in this world, 
whether in actual bloody warfare in de- 
fence of his home-land, or personally in 
battle against adverse circumstances, or 
again in the service of an ideal. When 
battle shall no longer be attended by spilled 
lives on blood-stained fields, the clash of 
ideas and vital life-forces will continue a 
warfare in the human attempt to try out 
the value of such forces and assert suprem- 
acies in the region of the intellect. Strife 
is the primordial law of nature; we must 

II 



The Orient Question 

look that fact squarely in the face; the 
principle governs all forms of creation, 
from the lowest up to the highest, — the 
struggle to survive, the struggle to win 
ever higher and to keep what has been 
won, to hold that which is conquered and 
possessed. The struggle for survival, the 
struggle for existence, cannot be eradicated 
by man-made disciplinary laws, but only 
by a series of conditions, by the creation 
or modification of conditions. It is the 
misery born of this struggle of existence 
which socialism and its theories attempt 
to remedy. So, also the various peace 
and arbitration plans seek to remedy the 
conditions of intercourse between the na- 
tions. Both sets of theories have hitherto 
brought but lame advance. Though both 
are imbued with the highest and sublimest 
of ideals, they assume that man-made law 
can stem the course of nature, and both 
in their methods have hitherto largely 
ignored the basic laws of nature underly- 

12 



General Considerations 

ing that contest. As there are means to 
create conditions in a community to make 
the struggle for existence easier for the 
individual, and to find those means the 
antecedents of the individual are studied 
to discover if heredity has not placed a 
handicap on him, while his domestic life, 
his needs and his opportunities form the 
subjects of investigation, so, too, the same 
principles apply to the study of nations. 
It is their home conditions, the conditions 
within themselves and their needs, or their 
Imagined needs — their greeds, which 
bring about strife. 

Supported by history It can be said In 
general, that all wars between nations, 
all civil upheavals, all mighty social vio- 
lences of whatever nature, have had at 
base whether apparent or obscure, an eco- 
nomical grievance, or a commercial ambi- 
tion. Back even of the so-called religious 
wars were causes partaking largely of the 
same character. 

13 



The Orient Question 

At the base of every real revolution is 
a loaf of bread, and commerce is a latent 
state of war. 

The methods of commerce inextricably 
bound up to-day with the foreign policies 
of nations, are by reason of competition 
in all its factors, essentially combative. 
Military action therefore may be but an 
extension, a consequence, not the breach 
but the continuity, of those methods. In- 
vestigation shows that whenever two na- 
tions go to war they have been for decades 
or perhaps centuries advancing on lines of 
interest which are convergent. If for some 
reason this clash of interests becomes vital, 
a matter of life or death, the struggle of 
survival enters, war becomes cheaper than 
peace for one or the other of the two. 
The elements which determine the question 
of the struggle for survival, lie at home, 
in the facts conditioning the livelihood of 
the members of the nation. 

Communities or nations in their differ- 
ent stages of youth, manhood and decay 

14 



General Considerations 

seem to follow the ebb and flow of periods 
similar to those of individual human life, 
and the cycle of their years includes within 
its rhythm, times of weakness and illness 
as well as epochs of health and mastery, 
a constructive age and the hour of disso- 
lution ; and the nature of what was builded 
proclaims the measure of a race's immor- 
tality. So it seems to have been from 
time immemorial as witnessed eloquently 
by " the glory that was Greece, the gran- 
deur that was Rome," by the moral con- 
quests of certain civilisations asserting for 
human dignity, and by the silent monu- 
ments and remains of the old buried cities 
of races long forgotten, recounting their 
shattered dreams to the archeologlst who 
digs up their broken columns and arches in 
Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. 
The stories told by the Egyptian priests to 
Solon, retold by Plato, echo the same an- 
cient tale. 

As the scientific study of the economics 
of life lead to finding means to ease the 

15 



The Orient Question 

struggle for life of the individual, so a 
scientific study of the underlying real 
causes of war must lead to the knowledge 
of laws which nature has laid down for 
the intercourse of nations, and so perhaps 
means will be discovered which will make 
war a thing of extreme rarity. 

It has been well ascertained that the 
basic condition essential to the develop- 
ment of individuals is liberty. The same 
Is true of races, and only when a State is 
the expression of the entity and totality of 
one nation, capable of formulating the 
genius of that nation, can it guarantee true 
liberty to Its citizens, and progress on a 
sound basis. Such a basis alone, can pro- 
vide for the moral and material needs of 
the community, establishing a trustworthy 
equilibrium between desire and the power 
of attainment, therefore possessing the 
confidence of the citizens. 

Working agreements providing guaran- 
tees of enduring International peace are 
possible between such States. 

i6 



General Considerations 

Should there rise to mind cases of a 
State composed of individuals represent- 
ing a wide diversity of races as in the 
United States, it must also be admitted that 
only when such individuals, as a result of 
the melting-pot process, or of their own 
free will, accept for their own a common 
national ideal, can the State hope for sta- 
bility or clearness of expression. That 
process of absorption and assimilation has 
been found possible concerning individuals 
in immigration, but not when attempted in 
regard to large masses of different races, 
especially when they form the homogeneous 
population of whole provinces which have 
been forcibly wrenched from a neighbour- 
ing national State. 

The impulse of communities of the 
same race to unify themselves into one 
State is the simple tendency towards in- 
telligent formulation found in all nature, 
and is a highly moral act in the interest of 
national eugenics. 

The completing of a national State to 

17 



The Orient Question 

Include all the members of its race is a 
necessary and constructive step towards 
the attainment of world-peace on a right- 
eous foundation. 

The subject under discussion is not the 
possibility of abolishing war but the ex- 
amination of the International problems 
from which war might conceivably arise. 

The geographical features of the earth, 
the configuration of the continents, the 
distribution of land and sea, the cllmateric 
conditions and their influences on the 
growth of plant and animal life, the riches 
of the soil, the mineral wealth of the sub- 
soil, are the primordial factors to deter- 
mine or influence the life and develop- 
ment of a people. To those must be 
added the facilities for communications 
and the Interchange of the necessities or 
luxuries of life, as well as the genius or 
mentality Inherent In a people, that Is, Its 
balance or equilibrium of mind which finds 

i8 



' General Considerations 

expression in its political and social devel- 
opment, its thought, its religious life, its 
soul-life. All those factors have to be 
taken into account in studying the future or 
a nation or race and their consideration is 
necessary to an understanding of its pres- 
ent, and indicate regions In both the ma- 
terial and moral spheres, where the inter- 
ests of that nation become vital. 

The geographical configuration of the 
earth's surface has driven staves, so to 
speak, to mark points where the interests 
of nations shall clash, where the " cock- 
pits " of that clash shall be. Certain 
points of the earth's surface are by their 
situation, regions where the Interests of 
two or more nations come into conflict, and 
whose possession confers dominant im- 
portance. Those points and zones form 
the natural storm-centres of the world. 

Napoleon said: ''War Is a business of 
positions," and the military value of po- 
sitions fix the geographical situation of the 
international problems which are of world 

19 



The Orient Question 

Importance and which link up all of the 
great interests of all the great powers and 
interweave them Into one pattern; and 
no one of these great international prob- 
lems can be solved or even modified with- 
out affecting In some point or other the 
status of the other problems. 

The first necessity of the economic de- 
velopment of a community is the means 
of Intercourse or communication with 
other communities. The raw material re- 
quired for Its Industries If not for food 
Itself, must often come from afar; the sur- 
plus of production must find an outer 
market; the livelihood of the community 
might depend on the sale of Its manufac- 
tured products, and modern Industrialism 
has imposed that need on many nations. 
The roads to such markets must be safe 
and secure, the competitive power of other 
nations must be met, and as commerce is 
never so secure and untrammeled as un- 
der Its own flag, the roads leading to those 
necessary markets or even those markets 

20 



General Considerations 

themselves must be controlled. The vital 
principle of this control demands political 
supremacy, which in turn depends upon a 
strong military land and sea power able to 
occupy and hold the strategic points com- 
manding such roads and markets, or to 
dominate such lands or peoples considered 
as desirable markets. 

Over-production of human material, 
calling for new territory whereupon to set- 
tle over-flow of population, causes an ex- 
pansion, under the inavoidable Impulse of 
nature, operated in migrations of peoples 
or the more deliberate form of colonisa- 
tion. 

» 

The Japanese author, Statesman and 
Privy Councillor, Baron Kaneko, says: 
" In the twentieth century It is the Increase 
and expansion of International commerce 
that guides the policies of nations." — He 
says further: — "All nations are looking 
for new markets for their Industries, and 
the only market now remaining which can 

21 



The Orient Question 

be exploited with benefit is the continent 
of Asia." 

Looking at the world's map and bear- 
ing in mind that water, whether by ocean, 
lake or river, affords the cheapest means 
of commercial intercourse, the shortest and 
cheapest routes from the great industrial 
centres of Europe and America, to the 
markets of Asia, are seen to lie through 
the two artificial passages connecting the 
oceans, the Suez Canal and the Panama 
Canal. The two mighty nerve-ganglia of 
the world political problems of to-day, lie, 
one in the eastern Mediterranean, one in 
the Caribbean Sea ; both positions command 
a narrow canal, and are vast lanes of the 
world's commerce. The eastern Mediter- 
ranean to-day, and the Caribbean to-mor- 
row, must necessarily be the centres around 
which the interests and the attention of 
the world must revolve. 

A third situation of straits of future 
significance and potentiality lies in the East 
Indian Archipelago between Australia and 

22 



General Considerations 

the southeastern Asia, forming a kind of 
sea-divide between the Indian Ocean and 
the Pacific. 

The Suez Canal is not only the im- 
portant eastern gate of the Mediterranean, 
of which Gibraltar is the door to the west, 
Malta, the watch-tower of the centre, the 
Dardanelles and Bosphorus, the entrance- 
ways to the Black Sea washing the shores 
of Russia, but the Suez Canal is the cen- 
tre of a region Including the Balkans in 
the north, the Persian Gulf and Caspian 
Sea in the east, and Aden, closing the Red 
Sea, in the south, where are grouped a 
number of positions of military, there- 
fore political value, which based one upon 
another control Southeastern Europe, and 
open thence a gate northward on one side, 
and on the other, dominate southern Asia, 
India and its ocean. 

That region towards which for the past 
one hundred years has been more and 
more closely converging the interests of 

23 



The Orient Question 

all western nations, has been in its main 
problems, the core of what is known as the 
Orient Question. The Orient Question 
whether under the guise of Turkish, Ar- 
menian, Egyptian, or Persian, has always 
in reality, been the one titanic contest of 
England with Russia, England striving 
ever in defence of India. 

The naval base, Gibraltar, door- 
keeper of the Mediterranean was acquired 
by England In the early eighteenth cen- 
tury when she fought France for suprem- 
acy in the Atlantic. The Cape of Good 
Hope was acquired during the French rev- 
olution and British guard placed at that 
naval base to watch the passage from the 
Atlantic eastward to the Indian Ocean. 
When Napoleon pointed a way to India 
across Egypt, England acquired Malta, as 
a strong naval base and point of warning 
midway In the Mediterranean, and at the 
southern extremity of the Red Sea at the 
straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, England erected 
the fortress of Aden. With the piercing 

24 




MAP OF THE WORLD 



General Considerations 

of Suez she acquired Cyprus and the con- 
trol of Egypt. 

The great positions of military and po- 
litical value in that part of the world are : 
Egypt, dominating Suez and the Red Sea ; 
In the Balkan Peninsula: Constantinople, 
(Dardanelles, Bosphorus), Salonika and 
the Servian Plateau comprising the Basin 
of Nish — the point of junction of the 
great natural highways of the Balkan 
Peninsula. Of supreme Importance is the 
possession of the Servian Plateau, opening 
the door to Europe northward, and the 
roads southward to Salonika, and east- 
ward to Constantinople. The possession 
of the Servian Plateau for which the Turks 
had fought the Servians for 150 years, al- 
lowed them in the year 1526 with the 
single battle of Mohacs to become the 
masters of Hungary and within a few 
short weeks to stand at the gates of 
Vienna. It was the possession of the 
Servian Plateau which made it possible for 
the Balkan allies in the present war to so 

25 



The Orient Question 

swiftly and completely clear their old lands 
from the Turks. It is the conquest of the 
Servian plateau which is the object of the 
relentless intrigues of Austria making pre- 
text of Albania in the present crisis. 

Again looking across the Bosphorus to- 
wards the Orient the situation of Constan- 
tinople (Bosphorus, Dardanelles) forms 
the apex of a triangle of positions, includ- 
ing the Armenian Plateau and Adana com- 
manding the passes across the Taurus and 
Anti-Taurus. Supreme in Importance of 
these is the Armenian Plateau. That re- 
gion commands the land-ways opening 
southward to the Gulf of Alexandretta 
through Syria to Suez, and the two long 
road-ways, one eastward across Persia to 
Herat and beyond through Afghanistan, 
the other, by the valleys of the Euphrates 
and Tigris toward the Persian Gulf, giv- 
ing access to southern Persia, southern 
Afghanistan, and Baluchistan towards In- 
dia. To those antique roads came Alexan- 
der the Great from Macedonia, and along 

26 



General Considerations 

them he carried his triumphs up to the 
foot of the Pamirs to the springs of the 
Tarim, where his empire touched China. 
He reached Merv, called of old " Antio- 
chia Margltana," and Herat, called " Alex- 
andria of Aria." By the long south way- 
he passed Babylon, the Persian Gulf, Susa, 
and Persepolis. From Alexandretta in 
Syria he marched down to Egypt. In 
modern times as in the day of the great 
Macedonian, the Armenian Plateau still 
commands the way to Persia, to India and 
to Egypt. As the Armenian Plateau lies 
under the shadow of the Russian hand, 
so too, in the eastern Mediterranean, 
Adana and the Gulf of Alexandretta,^ lie 

1 It is interesting to note that the river Orontes 
emptying into the Gulf of Alexandretta, is at a certain 
part of its course parallel with the Euphrates, low 
ridges only separating the two rivers and the distance 
of division between them measuring only about 50 
miles. That situation was picturesquely illustrated by 
the English Colonel Chesney in 1834 who steered two 
Steamboats named Tigris and Euphrates up the Or- 
ontes river thence had them carried across the dividing 
ridges and floated on the river Euphrates which they 

27 



The Orient Question 

well under the guns of the British naval 
base of Cyprus. 



As the Suez Canal gave to the Mediter- 
ranean a new importance, so the Panama 
Canal bestows upon the Caribbean Sea 
and the Gulf of Mexico an importance be- 
yond any they hitherto possessed. The 
Panama Canal not only provides a short- 
ened lane for the world's commerce across 
the oceans, with value not to be computed 
in the development of the western coasts 
of both Americas, but again suggestive of 
analogy with Suez, Panama will be a new 
point where East and West shall meet. 
That transection of the thin thread of land 
by which nature had joined the two vast 
Americas, considered locally, severs and at 
the same time brings Into closer communion 
two types of civilisation, the Anglo-Saxon 
In the north, the HIspano-Latin In the 

navigated down to the Persian Gulf. The Colonel's 
enterprise suggested another possible waterway from 
the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. 

28 



General Considerations 

south. As the Mediterranean from of old 
was the mother of civilisation in that part 
of the Eastern Hemisphere, so in the west 
the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, 
two sister basins enclosed within coast-lines 
of North, Central and South America on 
three sides, and by their interlocking chains 
of islands on the fourth, stretching from 
Trinidad to Key West, a barrier of pro- 
tection to inhibit or control the passage of 
their waters by fleets seeking course from 
the Atlantic to the Pacific, so too, those 
twin seas like their elder sister of Europe 
are destined to become the progenltrices 
and guardians of new and mighty civilisa- 
tions. From those islands, of the West 
Indies, forming the first discovery of west- 
ern lands, the Spaniards carried their con- 
quests to the ajacent continents, and al- 
ready, at first sight as it were, the 
mingling of the waters of the two mighty 
oceans was proposed by the men who first 
stood and gazed afar with both Atlantic 
and Pacific at their feet. 

29 



The Orient Question 

First the Dutch, then the French and 
then the English, came and fought with 
the Spaniard for a share of his amazing 
discoveries, then battled among them- 
selves. From those days of the Buc- 
caneers and the Spainsh Main, and contest 
for supremacy on the Atlantic, England 
emerged with Trinidad, Jamaica, British 
Honduras (on the mainland), connected 
by intervening isles in an almost continu- 
ous chain from Honduras to the mouth 
of the Orinoco, and stretching far 
northward and eastward with the Bahamas 
and Bermuda into the Atlantic. The 
Dutch still retain Curagao, the French^ 
some of the Antilles. The last of the 
Spanish heirs was the United States, re- 
ceiving Puerto Rico with vested interests 
in Cuba. 

The island positions, commanding the 
canal and forming its natural defences on 
the Atlantic side are: the natural island 
fortresses of Jamaica and Curagao, and 
Cuba derives its importance from its prox- 

30 



General Considerations 

imity to Florida. Still another point in 
the Caribbean of potential value as naval 
base, lies in Santo Domingo or possibly in 
St. Thomas. In the Pacific Ocean the de- 
fences of the Panama Canal are in the 
position of the Galapagos Islands and the 
Hawaii. 

Midway of the seas between Suez and 
Panama, dividing the Indian Ocean from 
the Pacific, the East Indian Archipel- 
ago lies like a broken bridge between 
Australia and the southeastern coast of 
Asia. The Straits of Singapore and the 
narrow passages between the Isles com- 
mand the approaches from the Indian 
Ocean, the Pacific and the Chinese coast. 
The position of first military value is occu- 
pied by the Philippine Islands, dominating 
the passages of the Straits, the Chinese 
Sea and coast-line. The important naval 
bases of the region are in the hands of the 
Dutch, of the English, keeping watch over 
the tracks to India, and of the Americans 

31 



The Orient Question 

with the Philippines as advance-post to the 
Chinese markets. The islands of the 
Archipelago are rapidly becoming the cen- 
tre of interest far in excess of any they 
have hitherto possessed and the mouth of 
the Shelde and Rhine in Europe may some 
day hold for them a word of destiny. The 
advent of Japan has already enhanced their 
significance as their possession would give 
to that Power complete control of East- 
ern Asia and a supremacy in that part 
of the world which could not be chal- 
lenged by any nation or combination of 
nations. 

The two canal routes, Suez and Panama 
and the straits of the East Indian Archi- 
pelago are the points of junction and in- 
tersection of world commerce, the trade 
lanes of nations; and the ambitions of one 
or more powers to own or command those 
gates in the interest of special individual 
advantages either economical, or political, 
or both, arouse international contest for the 

32 



General Considerations 

points of vantage controlling those gate- 
ways. 

Two Island groups by the fortune of 
the geographical situation they occupy in 
relation to adjacent continents and their 
oceans, have been and are by destiny the 
makers of history. They are: the Brit- 
ish Isles, on the Atlantic coast of the 
Eurasian continent, and the Japanese 
Isles on the Pacific shores of that conti- 
nent. 

Their geographical position gives to the 
British Isles the practical command of the 
west coast of Europe, they flank the trade 
routes of the Atlantic, dominate the 
French Atlantic sea roads, and entirely con- 
trol the German, Dutch and Baltic trade 
routes. 

The same relative position in the Pacific 
is occupied by Japan, who dominates the 
Eastern Asiatic coast and all approaches to 
northern China. 

Both Great Britain and Japan are by 

33 



The Orient Question 

geographical fiat, naval powers of the first 
order. To both, one in the Atlantic, the 
other In the Pacific, naval supremacy Is the 
condition of their existence as great powers. 
Each found its adversary, and later in that 
adversary Its ally, on the opposite neigh- 
bouring continental shore. The Anglo- 
German-French situation parallels at many 
points the Japanese-Chinese-Russian situa- 
tion. 

As the erection of a powerful Germany 
and France's abasement bore the force of 
a disaster for England, so in the Pacific 
an aggressive China would bear the nature 
of defeat for Japan and Russia. As Eng- 
land found a natural ally in her former foe, 
France, so Japan finds her natural ally in 
Russia, her former antagonist. 

The naval supremacy of the Pacific must 
ever be in the hands of whatever Pacific 
power possesses the great strategic naval 
bases of the Hawaiian Islands in the 
centre of the ocean. 

34 



General Considerations 

The problems and the forms In which 
they present themselves to us to-day, are 
not the results of accidental occurrences 
or conditions arisen in a single night, nor 
yet of the momentary caprice of states- 
men, but they are phases of movements 
occupying perhaps hundreds of years In the 
course of their development, and the suc- 
cessive events of which will be found to 
have been Intimately bound up with the 
prosperity, if not of the very existence 
of the nations they affect. 

British history furnishes the most vivid 
Illustration of these postulates bearing on 
the Oriental Question. The British world 
situation has its origin In those occurrences 
that took place In England's interior his- 
tory several hundreds of years ago, mould- 
ing English insular life of that time and 
imposing and forcing forward an aggres- 
sive foreign policy and the participation 
of England as instigator, patron or ac- 
tive co-operator in the field, in most of 
the wars from the Elizabethan age to 

35 



The Orient Question 

the present time. Profiting by these con- 
tests between nations and bringing forth 
from them trophies for herself, she be- 
came and remained during the Nineteenth 
Century the foremost power of the world. 
This consummation was not due to the 
action based on shrewd foresight and a dis- 
tinct preconcerted plan of one or more 
great statesmen, but was the natural con- 
sequence of steady and ceaseless pressure 
of general conditions in England. No 
statesmen or group of men were able to 
foresee or judge what the ultimate goal 
would be. Her paramount world position 
was attained by a series of actions each 
occasioned by a necessity of the time, and 
each bringing others in its train. During 
the whole period not one statesman (al- 
though England possessed since the days 
of Elizabeth her dynasty of Crown-min- 
isters in the Cecils) was fully conscious 
of the attainment that was being wrought, 
or who pre-conceiving the apogee of 
British supremacy, had the genius to mould 

36 



General Considerations 

the elements by a masterful policy that 
would abridge the slow construction of 
centuries and accomplish the majestic pur- 
pose within a single generation, such as 
were the mighty creations of Cavour and 
Bismark, which changed the face of Eu- 
rope and raised up new world factors. 

With nations as with individuals there 
is a sub-conscious cerebration which is far 
more infinite and more inexorable in its 
working than is the apparent and conscious 
ego. It is that which goes tirelessly on 
while individuals or nations wake or sleep, 
and influencing their actions and their 
tendencies. 

Lord Roseberry, in his " Questions of 
Empire " page 27, says in regard to Rus- 
sian policy and advance : ". . . the policy 
of Russia ... is practically unaffected by 
the life of man or the lapse of time, it 
moves on as it were by its own impetus. 
It is silent, concentrated, perpetual, and un- 
broken, it is therefore successful." 

The same is true in some degree of 

37 



The Orient Question 

every race and nation. The individual 
statesman does not create or destroy this 
impetus without causing the whole fabric 
to rock on its foundations. His sole power 
lies, according to the measure of his per- 
ceptive capacity in regard to this sub-con- 
scious mind of the nation, in being able 
either clumsily or skilfully to forward or 
retard the forces at work. 

The phase of a problem whose solution 
may to-day or to-morrow become imminent, 
numbers among its dynamic elements the 
necessity of prompt and resolute action in 
relief of some irresistible pressure, and the 
power and perfection of the national ma- 
chinery for the executive accomplishment 
of such purpose. 

It has been said that England is the 
Venice of the earth and her streets are the 
oceans. 

The beginning of the nineteenth century 
found England the possessor of a world 
empire on whose territories as the proud 

38 



General Considerations 

British boast is, *' the sun never sets '* ; they 
belt the earth, and her ships sailing the 
universal seas are always in touch with 
British shores. The statement is often 
made and believed that England for cen- 
turies has been ruled by an aristocracy, — 
but British aristocracy Is, and has always 
been, a thing largely of the people, for it 
has almost entirely sprung from trade and 
been nurtured by trade. Englishmen 
make the vaunt that a British boy from the 
humblest social strata may aspire to sit 
" on the Woolsack " (be Lord Chancellor 
of England) and attain the goal of his 
ambitions " if he have it in him." Cer- 
tain it is that In Great Britain those who 
rise to the " Woolsack " may have begun 
life by shearing the sheep, or tending it, 
or making market of yarn or mutton. In 
this the comparison between England and 
the Queen of the Adriatic becomes apt. 
The greatness of Venice, too, was the en- 
nobling of trade. 

The greater part of the soil in Eng- 

39 



The Orient Question 

land which In former times was tilled agri- 
culturally has been more and more aban- 
doned to become grazing lands or to be 
absorbed into large pleasure estates. To- 
day seventy-seven per cent, of the popula- 
tion live In the cities and are dependent 
for their sustenance on the industries which 
developed the mineral and other resources 
of the soil with the aid of that abundant 
and cheap labour. These economic con- 
ditions which began with the general use 
of steam and machinery, were the causes of 
radical political changes In English consti- 
tutional life. The country is at present, on 
account of the general decline of agricul- 
ture, dependent for its nourishment upon 
the importation of food-stuffs, statistics 
showing that at any given time the British 
Isles have never on hand more than a food 
supply sufficient to meet the requirements 
of the nation for three weeks. 

It was upon England's merchant marine 
that her ocean empire was founded, there- 
fore free-trade made of England the 

40 



General Considerations 

world's sea-carrier and her great ports, 
Liverpool, Hull, Southampton, and espe- 
cially London, centres of world commerce 
and the clearing-houses of the produce of 
the nations. 

With the sudden rise of England's 
neighbour, Germany, and the development 
of German Industries and trade, the conti- 
nental harbours of Hamburg, Rotterdam 
and Antwerp at the mouth of the Shelde 
and the Rhine, opposed to English trade 
and Industries a formidable rival. 

The heavy pressure of this foreign com- 
petition has a disturbing influence on Eng- 
lish Interior conditions, and Imposes the 
consideration of certain principles on 
British foreign policy. The aim of that 
policy must ever be In defending the In- 
terests of the British Isles, the defence of 
India, as the key-stone of their over-sea 
empire, and the reconstruction of the 
colonies Into a " Zoll-verein " according 
to the Chamberlain proposal, or into some 
other type of federation. 

41 



The Orient Question 

India, the richest field of colonial ex- 
ploitation in the world, indifferent through 
the ages as to the land of origin of its 
imperial Over-lord, therefore always a 
lure to the foreign conqueror and always 
under the supreme sway of foreign rule 
down to the Moguls and the British, In- 
dia Is the greatest of British continental 
possessions. 

During the past hundred years the 
whole British foreign policy has been di- 
rected as a chief object towards the de- 
fence of India. England's other con- 
quests, Canada, Australia and South 
Africa, have become autonomous States 
which appear to be slowly moving toward 
consolidation with the mother-country into 
a unified empire, no longer colonial, but 
composed of members of equal independ- 
ence. 

Apart from that mighty consolidation, 
the two poles In the preservation of the 
British Empire are the secure possession 
of India and the maintenance of British 

42 



General Considerations 

naval supremacy able to protect the eco- 
nomic position of the British Isles among 
nations. 

Russia, forming the northern half of 
the Eurasian Continent, an ice-blocked 
ocean on either hand, one to the Far Ori- 
ent, one to the Far Occident, limitless 
wastes of ice back of her, and her jealous 
gaze bent southward towards warmer lands 
and seas, Russia, next to England, is the 
power to be reckoned with in almost every 
one of the world's problems. Europe, the 
Near East, India, China, and the Pacific, 
each holds a question that must be answered 
to Russia. 

In her interior situation Russia suffers 
from over-centralisation. Her root-ills 
derive from the efforts of her rulers from 
the time of Peter the Great to the pres- 
ent day to imitate the institutions of the 
West, which they have super-imposed upon 
the old Russian forms of social fabric, ig- 
noring the basic differences between west- 

43 



The Orient Question 

ern ideas of the alms and methods of 
organised society, and the Slavonic concep- 
tion of human relations shown, by their 
institutions to have been from earliest 
centuries essentially democratic and co-op- 
erative in principle. 

In the course of these experiments of 
imitation Peter was led to abolish the 
Duma, that old Russian Parliamentary in- 
stitution. Katharina II., under the influence 
of Voltaire and the French Encyclopedists, 
undertook to import reforms from Paris 
and incidentally, accidentally, as it were, 
she created that greatest scourge of Rus- 
sia, serfdom, and a new form of land ag- 
glomeration into nobiliary estates. 

In 1 86 1 Alexander II. partially re- 
paired Katharina's mistakes by abolishing 
serfdom, but the land questions created by 
Peter and Katharina were not thoroughly 
reached by Alexander's acts and remained 
half solved. In his creations of the elective 
provincial, district, and community assem- 
blies, the Zemstvos — which are local 

44 



General Considerations 

self-governing bodies, he moved in the di- 
rection of Slavonic ideal, and those meas- 
ures were the attempted reformulation of 
conceptions that had existed in Russia be- 
fore the time of Peter the Great and had 
been common to all Slavonic peoples. 

The present form of Duma in usurping 
domains of legislative authority which by 
right of common sense should, in vast 
stretches of territories covering such dif- 
ferences of cllmateric and economic con- 
ditions, belong to the local self-governing 
bodies, Is but a new expression of the plague 
of over-centralisation. The Zemstvo, logi- 
cally, should possess the same measures of 
legislative power as that vested In the 
State Legislatures of the United States. 

Russia Is, therefore to-day, yet In a 
state of Interior re-constructlon In which 
distribution of authority and the many 
phases of the land question are the im- 
portant issues. 

Russia Is chiefly agricultural with a popu- 
lation of one hundred and sixty-four mll- 

45 



The Orient Question 

lions increasing at the rate of two and a 
half million per annum. Climatic and 
physical conditions divide that great Em- 
pire into three main zones : — the Tundra 
or vast frozen North, the cold forest zone 
stretching from the shores of the Baltic 
in Europe across Siberia to the Pacific 
Ocean, and the third belt, the Steppas, the 
agricultural zone. 

The drift of Russian population is south- 
ward in quest of better land and less severe 
climateric conditions. Twenty-five years 
hence the population of Russia, of which 
seventy-five per cent, are Slavs, will amount 
to nearly two hundred and fifty millions. 
Her emigration of Russian race of about 
one hundred and twenty thousand yearly is 
mostly composed of agriculturalists in 
search of good lands. This number has 
been diminishing since the government has 
made ef][orts to relieve the over-crowding 
of the European districts by aiding set- 
tlers to reach the southern and eastern 
Asian parts of the Empire. 

46 



General Considerations 

Since the shaking off of the Mongols 
and the " gathering together of the Rus- 
sian earth," Russia, station by station has 
set her landmarks further and further for- 
ward into the Asiatic continent. Wild 
vastnesses, the birthplace of the warring 
and terror-striking Tartars, have area 
by area, been subjugated or fallen in as if 
magnetically drawn under Russian sway, 
and so opened to civilisation. Russian au- 
thority brought with it steadily developing 
conditions of peace and order to the ad- 
vantage of Asia and the world. Uniform- 
ity of administration and law and the spread 
of a common tongue tend constantly to con- 
firm these conquests and consolidate them 
with European Russia, into one close com- 
munity of speech, sentiment, religion and 
political interests. 

England and the western nations con- 
tinue to extend their territorial possessions 
in quest of new markets and trade expan- 
sion, those possessions remaining hitherto 
" colonial " in character. Not so with 

47 



The Orient Question 

Russia, where the imperative demand for 
increase of territory arising from the 
growth of population is provided for by 
forces of conquest dwelling ever at the bor- 
ders composed of fighters, who at the same 
time are pioneers and agriculturalists — 
the Cossack, soldier-colonist, who tills 
the land as he takes it, and is followed by 
other Russian settlers, whom he leaves in 
his place as he penetrates further abreast. 
Thus the sod itself becomes Russian.^ 

1 The spirit which inspires the Cossack of to-day 
in his ceaseless carrying forward of the Russian bor- 
ders is the same as that which fired the endeavours of 
Yermak, the peasant " the tracker and pirate of the 
Volga " and the founder of greater Russia, who writ- 
ing to the Tzar asking pardon for his lawless past, 
offered in atonement the vast Asiatic Empire, which he 
had won with his sword. The highest honors with 
rank of Prince bestowed upon him with a gift of the 
Tzar's own mantle by Ivan the Terrible were only 
picturesque recognitions of his imperishable fame. 

The same spirit led Khabaroff, another of Russia's 
peasant empire-builders, also a winner of lasting na- 
tional renown, the first Cossack to meet and defeat the 
Chinese on Chinese soil. There where to-day stands 
the Capital of Far-Eastern Russia, the town of 
Khabaroffsk on the Amour River, Khabaroff with but 
200 Cossacks won victory over a Chinese army ten- 

48 



General Considerations 

Most of Russia's soil Is in the cold zone 
and not suited for good farming, so her 
necessity to acquire land sparsely popu- 
lated In temperate and warm zones; there- 
fore Russia has no Interest In the conquest 
or annexation of densely populated coun- 
tries, and It Is not likely that India or 
China are In any danger of Russian Inva- 
sion. The case Is different In regard to 

fold stronger than his own. In his letter written to 
the Tzar almost in sight of the Pacific Ocean fifty 
years after Yermak had crossed the Ural mountains, he 
manifests the Russian idea: — 

" — On March 24th at day-break, the Bogdoi (Chi- 
nese) army, horsemen and armoured men came upon 
us Cossacks . . . we Cossacks put on our armour, and 
I, lerothei, and the regular and volunteer Cossacks, 
praying the Saviour and our Blessed Virgin and Saint 
Nicholas took farewell of each other. And I, lerothei, 
and Andrea Ivanoff, and all our Cossack army said: — 
' Let us die, brother Cossacks, for the Christian Faith, 
let us stand by the Saviour, the Virgin and Saint 
Nicholas, let us serve the Emperor Alexis Michailo- 
vich. Grand Prince of All the Russias, and let us 
Cossacks all die against the Tzar's enemies, but never 
shall we fall alive into the hands of the Bogdoi men' 
... As we sallied forth upon them we captured two 
iron guns, and by the Grace of God and the Imperial 
good luck and our own efforts we fell upon the enemy 

49 



The Orient Question 

Eastern Turkestan or Mongolia which are 
both practically empty. Manchuria was 
virtually unpopulated at the time of the 
Russian occupation, and the same was true 
of western Turkestan. 

Russian needs are lands sparsely popu- 
lated in temperate and warm zones, and 
the open warm Sea. 

Japan, like Great Britain, an island 
State, the latest comer among the great 

. . . and a great fear came upon them . . . and the 
remaining Bogdoi men (Chinese) fled from the town 
and our arms." . . . 

Many writers who have travelled through those far 
regions always have found as answer to their ques- 
tions whether from peasant, simple private soldier, 
Cossack, or official high or low the same notion of 
Russian mission along the top of the world: — to carry 
the Cross forward and with it peace and order. The 
Christian ideal as expressed in the Russian Orthodox 
Faith, deeply embedded in the Slavonic heart, peasant 
and prince alike, has its chief characteristics in con- 
ceptions of brother-hood finding practical expression 
in communistic institutions and customs, looking toward 
the definite establishment of Christ's Kingdom on the 
Earth. So the wildest Cossack leader takes with him 
the Cross, and plants it as a standard to mark his 
road of conquest. 

50 



General Considerations 

modern powers, is one of the oldest of 
state-formations, maintained through the 
centuries on the basis of a strong military 
feudalism and closed to the world. 

In 1854 that island nation was com- 
pelled by the United States in the person 
of Commodore Perry to open its doors, an 
operation at once put to advantage by 
other nations following in the wake of 
America. Japan, brought thus suddenly 
face to face with the Occident, realised 
that in self-defence, and in order to pre- 
serve her power of self-assertion in a dif- 
ferent world ruled by different conditions 
from any she had known, the Japanese 
must make themselves able to meet the 
West with weapons of the West. In the 
period of turmoil and upheaval that en- 
sued the late Emperor Mutso-Hito, as a 
youth, put himself at the head of the new 
movements effecting the imperial restora- 
tion to power, and gradually brought about 
those changes in the organisation of all de- 
partments of military, political, economic 

51 



The Orient Question 

and cultural existence, which re-incarnated 
the old Japanese martial spirit in modern 
forms, creating within that Emperor's 
single life a new Japan possessing power 
more formidable than had ever been at- 
tained during the previous thousands of 
years of Japanese history. 

The northern regions of the Japanese 
Isles, Saghahn, Yeso and the northern part 
of Nippon are cold, forest-covered and 
thinly populated. The warm southern 
parts of the Islands are its agricultural dis- 
tricts, lands of the rice-fields, the tea- 
plantation, the home of the cherry-blossoms 
and the picturesque scenes with Fujiyama 
in the background made known by the na- 
tive artists and which image Japan in the 
world's mind. 

Three-fifths of the agricultural land is 
composed of small farms tilled by their 
owners, the other two-fifths are worked on 
the tenant system. The warm parts of 
the country are over-populated. Hence, 
with abundance of cheap labour Japan has 

52 



General Considerations 

been able to triumphantly enter the field of 
modern industries, and the scientific ex- 
ploitation of her mineral resources. The 
industries, however, do not absorb the 
whole of the dense over-population, large 
numbers of which emigrate southward to 
the warm islands and far shores of the 
Pacific. 

In spite of the skill of the farmer it is 
significant that Japan has been forced to 
begin the importation of food-stuffs. 

With her growing industries fostered by 
State subvention and financial participation, 
under a system which Is a new departure 
in political economy, Japan experiences in 
common with other nations the increasing 
necessity for foreign markets. She is on 
the high road to become one of the fore- 
most carrier-nations and her commercial 
ports tend more and more to become 
the great clearing-houses for the Far 
East. 

These conditions and the defence of her 
islands must shape her future policies, and 

53 



The Orient Question 

they seem to indicate a logical ambition 
for Japanese supremacy on Pacific Seas. 

The United States of America — 
the first mighty offspring born of the 
modern spirit of Independence, found its 
hour and opportunity to come forth into 
being, in the great Anglo-Franco contests 
of the eighteenth century. While those 
powers were locked in the struggle for co- 
lonial and naval supremacy in the Far At- 
lantic, the fledgling prize, like an un- 
watched callow eagle, suddenly found the 
strength of its wings and took flight to- 
wards the sun — to the wonderment of 
both combatants and the rest of mankind. 

From young America came the first proc- 
lamation to the world, in the voice of ac- 
complished fact, of the right of a whole 
people to choose Its form of government 
as well as name Its governors. That new 
assertion of human rights within the short 
elapse of time since its utterance by Wash- 
ington's army and the valorous framers 

54 



General Considerations 

of the Declaration of Independence, has, 
as Lafayette prophesied, speaking to 
French Louis, of the " Red, White and 
Blue," " gone round the world." 

The tale of American growth is a story 
of marvel. How the original thirteen 
States, with unheard-of rapidity, leapt west- 
ward like prairie flame and stretched them- 
selves Into a vast continent filling the earth 
between the two oceans; first, the refuge 
of the world's noblest rebels, then, coming 
to be the goal of armies of the down-trod- 
den, the destitute and the broken-hearted, 
immigrants from those parts of old Eu- 
rope where life was most diflicult or the 
heel of oppression the heaviest, — these 
things are recounted by millions of Ameri- 
can school-boys in the accents of all the 
races of the globe. 

Before the new nation, lay the untram- 
melled exploitation of the limitless treasure 
of virgin nature In the temperate zone. 
For a time every man could have land for 
a home by merely living on It. The pos- 

55 



The Orient Question 

sibilities of the stupendous exploitation of 
the riches of the sub-soil — the metals and 
oils — were seized upon by men who be- 
came Titans in their handling of immeasur- 
able resources. The wealth they melted 
together and rolled up grew into whole 
worlds, too great for human control, in- 
capable of pausing, gathering and crush- 
ing into their spheres all things and all 
lives on their way. 

In the development of gigantic indus- 
tries the vast systems of railroads, and 
harnessed water and electricity, and even 
the produce of farm and cattle-ranch, were 
in a way the progeny of the giant indus- 
tries, and came more and more to be con- 
sidered only in their relation to those vast 
inhuman mechanisms for the building of 
towers of gold. In the service of the in- 
dustries the lives of the multitudes of men 
once more lost their personal meaning, be- 
came cheap, valued only according to their 
measure of capacity to in some way feed 
the inexorable machine, either with brains 

56 



General Considerations 

or body, becoming only so much brain, or 
so much labour. In the cyclopean develop- 
ment the human equation had been well- 
nigh over-looked, but spilt life, like spilt 
blood calls, from the ground, and the new 
race aroused to a sense of its perils, 
whether as labourers in revolt, or as edu- 
cated sons and daughters of an ideal, have 
set themselves with all their might to exact 
or seek fulfilment of the promise of the 
Republic as a land where life, liberty and 
happiness of the individual shall be secure. 
So in the " brave new world " of freedom 
men have again brought together all the 
ferocious passions and miseries as well as 
all the genius and divine hope and heroism 
of the human race, raising all its ancient 
problems to the power of the unknown 
figure of the new world's incomputable 
dynamics. There, still, must the old bat- 
tles be waged and principles of life and 
death prove themselves, in furnaces of fear- 
ful blast, hitherto unseen on the earth. 
Meanwhile American commerce has 

57 



The Orient Question 

gone out across all the seas to all countries. 
Its ports from imperial New York to the 
Golden Gate at the setting sun are world- 
ports. And who shall say with the open- 
ing of the Panama Canal what will be the 
power of New Orleans feeding the world^s 
shipping with the drain of America's pro- 
duce borne by the Mississippi to the Gulf, 
or what other vast emporia of the sea will 
rise to commercial greatness in the course 
of American progression. 

With the Spanish war America stepped 
boldly forward as a great world power 
who must enter the race for markets, and 
whose foreign policies must be dictated 
by the necessities of her economic develop- 
ment. 

The national needs of Germany have 
to be considered from a two-fold point 
of view: — first, in the light of her Euro- 
pean position; and second, in relation to 
her world policies looking to the oceans 
and over seas. 

S8 



General Considerations 

The borders of Germany are artificial, 
and the great movement for German unity 
has not yet attained the full measure of its 
goal. There are Germans still in Austria, 
and there is a Teutonic speaking race about 
the mouth of the German Rhine and the 
Shelde, lands once within the great German 
Kingdom of the Middle Ages. Prior to 
the war of 1866 which fixed the destiny 
of modern Germany, there existed the al- 
ternative of a re-constructed Germany led 
by Hapsburg-Austria, and a smaller but 
more powerful German Empire more 
purely national, to be built by Prussia and 
the Hohenzollerns. Fate and the genius 
of Bismark seconded by Moltke leading a 
galaxy of remarkable German patriots, 
cast the die for the Hohenzollern creation, 
which is the nucleus of the greater Germany 
of to-morrow. 

The soil in Germany is not generally 
very favourable to agriculture, but skill and 
patience of the farmer make the best of 
it. The produce, however, is no longer 

59 



The Orient Question 

sufficient to feed the fast augmenting popu- 
lation, and the importation of food-stuffs 
has already become a necessity. Up to 
the early eighties the German emigration 
ran as high as two hundred thousand a 
year. The German industries were not 
yet developed and the surplus population 
which could not find profitable employ in 
agriculture and its allied branches emi- 
grated. With the development of the in- 
dustries and German mercantile shipping, 
acting not only as carrier of German pro- 
duce, but slowly becoming the carrier of 
the larger trade of the world, that surplus 
population found employment at home and 
the emigration ceased. The different 
legislations caring for the worker, such as 
the workmen's insurance laws, and other 
measures in protection of the labouring 
classes, coupled with the workmen-schools, 
developed highly skilled labour, so that to- 
day Germany has an immigration of un- 
skilled labour compensating largely for the 
small yearly emigration of about twenty-five 

60 



General Considerations 

thousand, a figure stationary during the 
last ten years, and small, considering the 
increase in Germany's population from 
about forty millions in 1870 to about sixty- 
seven million in 19 12. 

The sub-soil in the central regions of 
the Empire holds vast mineral deposits. 
The enormous coal beds and water-power 
have enabled Germany to virtually stop 
the tide of emigration and engage in stu- 
pendous industrial development aided by 
great State-owned systems of railroads and 
waterways. The ever-increasing water- 
way system is formed of the rivers and 
their vast network of inter-connecting 
navigable canals, which put all parts of 
Germany into inter-communication by water 
and rail. 

Starting at Hamburg and Bremen the 
German merchant marine bears a great 
part of the imperial commerce which is 
second only to that of Great Britain. 

With the necessity in the near future of 
finding territory for an overflow of popu- 

61 



The Orient Question 

lation, Germany entered the race for col- 
onies, but so late in the day that the best 
of the lands still open to colonisation had 
already been occupied or pre-empted by 
the other great powers. Only Cameroun 
on the west Coast of Africa and German 
East Africa can be said to have become 
responsive as colonies. 

Germany's needs are : control of a larger 
extent of home sea coast, colonies better 
suited for German population than those 
she at present possesses; and for the pro- 
tection of her commercial expansion in the 
interests of markets which have been scien- 
tifically created and fostered in all regions 
of the earth she requires a powerful mili- 
tary fleet and naval stations. 

In the eighteenth century France and 
England fought on the seas for colonial 
empire and naval supremacy. After 
France had lost the Indies the contest was 
carried to the Americas where France sup- 
porting the American revolution, saw de- 

62 



General Considerations 

feat inflicted on England. England's retort 
was to aid the revolution in France, carry- 
ing the battle to the very throne in the 
palace of Versailles, and into the shadow 
of the Guillotine on the Place de la Greve. 
France seemed to have slid down a path 
of blood to utter ruin. Foreign armies, 
strengthened with subsidies from the ad- 
versary, were already on the march to take 
part in the spoils of fallen empire. But in 
that hour of utter disarray and darkness, 
the soul of France awakened, the na- 
tion found leaders to assert the will of a 
living people, and with Napoleon, put a 
ring of fire around the nation to stand for- 
ever as a token of French valour and mil- 
itary glory. 

Like a god, fashioning new worlds out 
of the shattered rack of starry systems 
after a celestial cataclysm, Napoleon drew 
material from the general wreckage from 
which he modelled institutions of national 
credit, of law and justice, of administra- 
tive function, of learning, art and religion, 

63 



The Orient Question 

and organisation in all departments of pub- 
lic life, which have enabled France to with- 
stand, through various vicissitudes, the 
assaults of a century from within and with- 
out. 

The soil is good for agriculture, the sub- 
soil only rich in minerals in the east and 
north, the regions of the industries. 
France, with no over-population, is chiefly 
agricultural in the proportion of three- 
fifths to two-fifths. The land in general is 
owned by large numbers of petty agricul- 
turers who till the soil carefully and fru- 
gally hoard their earnings. The farmer is 
the back-bone of France and the " wool- 
stocking *' holding his savings makes of 
France the banker of nations. 

Although France possesses a long coast 
line she is poor in good commercial sand- 
free ports, but rich in a fine net-work of in- 
terior water-ways of rivers and canals mak- 
ing connection with the sea-ports and with 
the Rhine on the north. Industrial France 
in the east and north, removed from any 

64 



General Considerations 

corivenient sea-outlet, has brought a gravi- 
tation of French interests toward the Rhine 
and the ports at its mouth. The thou- 
sand-year old political question of the 
Rhine, Alsace-Lorraine, apart from all 
popular sentiment in both France and 
Germany, has always been at bottom a 
question of economics. 

In nearly all the countries of the world 
the necessity of obtaining colonies has near 
relation to over-population, either imme- 
diate or imminent in the home-lands; but 
in France, colonial possessions, beyond their 
value as markets, assert the majesty of 
France's position among the great powers, 
and the ideal of cultural and intellectual 
dominance which is never absent from the 
French mind. 

With the Restauration In 1815 the aim 
of French policy was to undo the work of 
the Congress of Vienna, and to regain 
France's lost prestige by colonial expan- 
sion. The last gift of the Bourbons to 
France before their final exit, was Algiers, 

65 



The Orient Question ' 

— a new France across the Mediterranean. 
After the French disaster of 1870-71, 
In addition to the effort at re-assertion of 
national might through colonial expansion, 
France's policy was influenced by the neces- 
sities of her national defence having re- 
gard to Germany and Italy, and the 
sentimental desire to retake what were con- 
sidered her " natural borders " on the 
Rhine. 

Italy through the centuries had been 
a mere geographical expression and the 
name of a dream of unification, floating In 
the mind of its poets and statesmen who 
more than once vaguely attempted Its real- 
isation, noteworthlly by a great Roman 
Pope. The vision was brought ephemer- 
ally Into substance by the protean hand of 
Napoleon, — ^but only made real, by the 
famous group of men In whose van were, 
that weaver of dreams Into woof, Mazzini, 
Garibaldi, leader of swords, blazing a new 
way, and Cavour, the brain. In whose fine 

66 



General Considerations 

flame were brought together into formu- 
lated creation all that could be wrought by 
the others. 

Massimo d'Azegllo said at the first con- 
vening of the young Italian Parliament: — 
" Italy is made, we have now to make the 
Italians," and the war just concluded with 
Turkey to win back the old Roman pos- 
session of Tripoli has been the completing 
stroke in the making of Italians. 

At the moment of Italy's unification, 
economic conditions in the several regions 
were unequal and belonged to differing 
periods of time. In the north, were con- 
ditions favourable for development. In 
the centre and south, the country lay under 
mediaeval disabilities. Italy still suffers 
under the heritage of the disorganisation 
and corruption of the centuries when her 
lands were the prey of foreign misrule and 
rapine. 

She is only at the beginning of the ex- 
ploitation of her rich natural resources. 
Her great problem is still the agrarian 

67 



The Orient Question 

question. In tHe south, the land is de- 
voured by the latifundla which ruined Rome 
in antiquity. Some districts are almost 
empty of inhabitants, while the towns are 
overcrowded, causing a large emigration 
of misery-stricken people. The northern 
parts of Italy with large numbers of small 
agricultural owners and tenant farmers are 
prosperous. 

The Peninsula is not very rich in min- 
erals, but the lack of coal has been over- 
come by the use of water-power and elec- 
tricity which is making of northern Italy 
an industrial region of Importance. 

In the Middle Ages the Italian Repub- 
lics of Venice, Genoa, and Florence were 
the rich emporia of Europe's trade with 
the Orient, and at the present time the geo- 
graphical position of Italy gives her a com- 
manding position in the commerce between 
East and West. Naples has become prom- 
inent as a commercial port and Genoa is 
again rising towards her ancient maritime 
splendour. 

68 



General Considerations 

New Italy has not only had to re-erect 
and set in order a house crumbling to de- 
cay, but the newly organised State had to 
face a difficult political situation, enemies 
within its borders, the constant neces- 
sity of guarding against attack from Aus- 
tria and the clash of her interests in the 
Mediterranean with those of France. 

The recent Italian conquest of Tripoli 
in the war with Turkey was aimed not only 
at stemming the tide of Italian emigration 
which was draining the nation's life-blood, 
but at acquiring a coast line on opposite 
African shores, with islands in the Mediter- 
ranean of strategic value in the interests 
of her national defence against Austrian 
aggression southward, and the assertion of 
the power of Italy in the Mediterranean. 



In antiquity as we know, the problems 
of the intercourse of nations, their political, 
economical and cultural life centred chiefly 
around the Mediterranean, the Red Sea 

69 



The Orient Question 

and the Persian Gulf, and remained so 
through the ages, up to the time when the 
land roads of commerce between East and 
West were thronged and closed by the in- 
vading Turks. At that time there was no 
Suez Canal, no known sea-road from Eu- 
rope to the East. The entire trade in the 
Eastern Mediterranean, the vast traffic 
along the land roads across Syria and 
Arabia was in the hands of Venice. 

The search for new roads along which 
to bring the silks, gems and spices of the 
Orient westward, opened up, in the dis- 
covery of the Americas and rounding of 
the Cape, new sea-routes to India and 
China and the Pacific Isles, and gave rise 
to the contest among European nations for 
colonial possessions, new lands, new mar- 
kets. Spain, Portugal, France, Holland 
and England all strove for the monopoly 
of the newly discovered sea-roads, each 
seeking to become the sole possessor of 
those rich markets, those new lands with 

70 



General Considerations 

their unlimited wealth, made accessible for 
the first time by the new sea tracks. 

Those were the times of the noble com- 
pany of sea-adventurers, the Spanish 
Main, and Buccaneers, of the South Sea 
bubbles and of Chartered Companies. 

Those new fields of commercial and eco- 
nomic battle displaced the ancient centre of 
world interest from the Mediterranean to 
the Gulf of Mexico, the Americas and 
India. The sanguinary struggles among 
the nations of Europe for commercial, eco- 
nomic and colonial supremacy took place 
on the oceans of the world as well as on 
the blood-stained fields of Europe. The 
battle of centuries between England and 
France came to a culmination and finish 
with the French revolution and the ensu- 
ing wars. Pitt, who had so largely financed 
the French revolution, said on the eve of 
the battle of Austerlltz (1805), where he 
confidently hoped that Napoleon would be 
crushed by the Austro-Russlan Allies, that 

71 



The Orient Question 

on that battle-field England would regain 
her lost American colonies. 

In 1798, Napoleon, then General Bona- 
parte, received the order to occupy Egypt 
for France, and to cut a canal across the 
Isthmus of Suez, so to execute the plan 
which had first been conceived by Venice in 
1505, and later revived by the Philosopher 
Leibnitz and proposed by him to Louis 
XIV. of France. Bonaparte was to make 
of Egypt and the Red Sea a base of op- 
erations for the re-conquest of India from 
England. Napoleon's Egyptian cam- 
paign proving barren of result, inspired 
in that homeric brain the policy of launch- 
ing Russia across the vastnesses of Asia 
towards British India. To that end was 
formed the ephemeral alliance between 
Napoleon and the Emperor Paul of Rus- 
sia, and since then, without surcease, Mos- 
cow has haunted London. 

At the close of the Napoleonic era, after 
the congress of Vienna, England was the 
mistress of the seas, having won, during 

72 



General Considerations 

the Napoleonic wars not only the complete 
mastership of India, but Dutch South Af- 
rica, the great island positions in the 
Mediterranean of Malta and the Ionian 
Isles. Her eyes were thenceforth bent 
upon Egypt and Suez, Persia and Afghan- 
istan, seeing in those regions the advance 
posts of her defence of India. Every 
move of Russian expansion in Asia or in 
Europe appeared to the statesmen of 
Great Britain as a step in the great Na- 
poleonic plan of a Russian conquest of In- 
dia. From that time up to the present 
day the " Orient Question " — centred 
in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Bal- 
kans (Bosphorus and Dardanelles), Suez, 
Egypt, Persia and the approaches to India, 
— has been the titanic contest between the 
Colossus of the North and the Conqueror 
of India, modified in its various phases 
by the issues proceeding from the Haps- 
burg desire for the subjugation of the Bal- 
kan lands, the efforts of France in the ear- 
lier years of the century to destroy the work 

73 



The Orient Question 

of the Vienna Congress and later to avenge 
the disaster of 1870-71, and the appearance 
of a new and formidable antagonist to 
England with the entrance of Germany 
into the World Arena, creating the 
Anglo-German situation, in essence 
an Increasing trade rivalry between those 
nations each backed by augmenting mili- 
tant forces. 

The Hapsburg plans for the conquest 
of neighbouring sovereign States and the 
struggle of that Dynasty with the spirit of 
nationality in the effort to hold down vari- 
ous annexed provinces belonging to several 
racial groups, constituting a battle to the 
death on one of its last fields between worn- 
out feudal tyranny and the modern de- 
mand for national freedom, are the ele- 
ments of this stupendous problem whose 
solution in the near future has already 
been signalled by the present acts of inter- 
national aggression on the part of Aus- 
tria-Hungary. 

The antagonism between England and 
74 



General Considerations 

Russia, the re-generation of Japan and 
consequent necessity of expansion in all de- 
partments of its national life, the final 
awakening of China, the Japanese victories 
over Russia resulting in the Russo-Japanese 
alliance full of grave concern to the world 
situation, brought forth that latest and 
most stupendous of modern aspects of the 
Orient Question : the mastery of the Far 
East and the Pacific. 

The fast-evolving imperial policies of 
America, her particular interests in her own 
hemisphere asserted by the Monroe Doc- 
trine, and the problematic nature of the 
future attitude which other nations may 
come to assume towards that assertion, to- 
gether with the character of the means of 
making foreign protest effective, form the 
elements of the American problem into 
which with the opening of the Canal and 
the development of the new situation in 
the Pacific, the conflicts between the other 
Great Nations must be reflected either inti- 
mately or remotely. 

75 



CHAPTER II 

THE NEAR EASTERN PROBLEM 

A. GENERAL SURVEY. 

THAT part of the world geographically 
limited by the Eastern Mediterra- 
nean, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the 
Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, was always 
the point of contact between the Occident 
and Orient. For thousands of years it 
was the arena of the nations in the thrall 
of empire-building. There, ancient do- 
minions rose upon ruins of former States, 
to be themselves in time subject to the same 
fate at the hand of invaders, ever pouring 
in from the world's womb. New realms 
and sways, ever forming, failing and re- 
forming, like the changing surface of the 
sea, unceasingly rising and falling either, 
in semblance of rhythm, or lashing in tern- 

76 



Near Eastern Problem 

pestuous fury, lifting up unconquerable 
mountains of murderous tides towards the 
skies, not to be stayed or withstood till Its 
rage be self-spent. So, again and again, 
sword and flame In those mid-regions of 
the earth, swept out of existence the be- 
ginnings of nascent civilisations before 
they could fully bring forth any lasting 
treasure of culture or any social organism 
able to resist the rack of time and Insure 
steady progress to the race of men. 

When, with the Turkish conquests, the 
Mediterranean and its coasts became the 
scenes of the exploits of the pirates and 
corsairs of Islam, and the sea-faring ex- 
ploits of Portuguese and Spaniards had 
caused the waters of the broad oceans to 
become the highway to India and the mys- 
terious lands of the Orient, and new conti- 
nents were discovered, this centre of world 
interests for several hundred years, 
lost Its predominance as the region of en- 
counter between the nations of the world, 
and became relegated to a more secondary 

77 



The Orient Question 

plane. During the last century, immedi- 
ately following the Napoleonic period of 
wars, when the making of the British Em- 
pire neared its completion and the Russian 
began to reach out further over the Asiatic 
Continent, Mediterrania acquired again its 
old prominence. With the piercing of the 
Suez Canal, and the orientation anew of 
commerce along the old trade-routes from 
Europe to Asia through the Eastern Medi- 
terranean and the Red Sea, and with the 
building of railroads across Asia Minor, 
pushing their steel lines in the direction of 
India, the economic and political interests 
and ambitions of the European nations 
converged once again in that region of 
the earth. So every change in the balance 
of power among European nations is re- 
flected in that quarter, and every move or 
change in that region reacts on the political 
conditions of Europe. With the develop- 
ment of the Far-Eastern situation and the 
Pacific Question, which in their turn touch 
closely the American problem, the Near 

78 



Near Eastern Problem 

Eastern Question, so long called the Ori- 
ent Question, has come into inter-relation 
with those problems of the Far East and 
the Pacific, and changes in either hemi- 
sphere must thenceforth affect the general 
situation. 

The study of this problem requires con- 
sideration of its historic elements in order 
to observe how they shaped themselves 
into their present phase, not only concern- 
ing local aspects and the principles they 
are based upon, but as they affect the chess- 
board of European and world politics. 

The two main formative forces at the 
foundation of the situation as it Is to-day, 
are two mighty groups of conquests: — 
one, the attainment of Islam, — Arab and 
Ottoman Turk; — the other, the colonial 
achievements and expansion In Asia of the 
European powers. 

The Turkish conquest created all 
those questions of primarily local Impor- 

79 



The Orient Question 

tance. Their International bearings arise 
from the political changes they occasion 
or might occasion causing them to be re- 
flected In the political conditions of the 
world. Those questions Involve — the 
difference of creed and civilisation between 
conqueror and conquered; the impossibility 
of amalgamation between conqueror and 
conquered Into a nation; his necessity of 
holding the conquered lands and peoples 
by repression and force; the resistance of 
the nations who at one time or other had 
been conquered by the Ottoman and their 
strife to recall from abeyance their in- 
herent national sovereignty, which the con- 
quest had made dormant. The Balkan 
Question at this moment appears to 
be nearing a solution — which eliminates 
the Ottoman element, but yet fails to com- 
pletely wipe out the consequences both di- 
rect and Indirect of the Osmanll conquest, 
as questions are still pending. Intimately 
connected with the problems which the Aus- 
tro-Hungarlan State formation present. 

80 



Near Eastern Problem 

The probable and final solution of that 
European problem must include the re-ad- 
justment of the balance of power in Europe, 
making place for the new State-group, the 
Allied States of the Balkans, in league 
concerning common foreign interests and 
representing a great militant power. 

Among the considerations within the old 
realm of Ottoman conquest, which, after 
hundreds of years at last claim practical 
attention and solution, are the re-assertion 
— probably In the near future, of the Ar- 
menian nation and Its sovereignty at pres- 
ent In abeyance to the Turk, Home-rule 
For the Arabs of Syria and Yemen, and the 
re-organisation of the Ottoman Empire it- 
self In Asia — if indeed there still be an 
Ottoman Empire. 

The other principal formative forces of 
that Near Eastern Question were gener- 
ated by the conquests and expansion of 
European powers in Asia, and comprises all 
the different questions resulting from the 
encounter of the Russian Empire still in 

8i 



The Orient Question 

making and the British Empire in the proc- 
ess of consohdation and conservation, 
which found their theatre in the Ottoman 
Empire, in Persia, and in China, where 
Japan entered as one mighty factor, and 
the United States as another. In the Near 
Eastern or Ottoman part of that theatre, 
France, at the beginning was a shaping ele- 
ment, as to-day is Germany, a newcomer 
not to be neglected, especially in view of 
her militant power and the Anglo-German 
situation; and, too, Italy in acquiring Trip- 
oli has gained a more commanding voice 
in the Arena of Nation-makers and Em- 
pire-builders. 

B. islAm. 

First, among the events which brought 
about the changes in the distribution of 
political power among the nations of the 
earth, an event among the most important 
at the basis of the problems now before 
the world, was the coming of Islam. 

Islam as a religious faith, a cultural 
8.2 



Near Eastern Problem 

force, a status of society, or a civilisation 
IS based on other mental conceptions than 
those of Greece and Rome or of Brahma, 
Buddha, Confucius, Zoroaster or MIthra. 
Islamic teaching, as shown In Its restric- 
tions and Its rewards, was pre-eminently 
fitted to accomplish the sole aim of con- 
quest by the sword, to create fighting ma- 
terial, soldiers; the assertion of the sa- 
credness of the Islamic war of conquest. 
War waged by the Mahomedan was always 
" Holy war," etc., and It Is not by accident 
that the one creative achievement of Ma- 
homedanlsm through the ages was Irresist- 
ible hosts of conquest — brought to their 
extremest pitch of effectiveness and fanat- 
icism in the Janlsaries of the Ottomans. 

Mahomedanism, so-called after its 
prophet and founder Mahomet, is not a 
religion In the Christian sense, involving 
principally problems of morality, spiritual 
growth and Immortality, but somewhat sim- 
ilar to Mosaism, a social status, regulating 
all actions of civil life and social relation- 

83 



The Orient Question 

ship. That social, political and religious 
fabric called Islam, is based on the legal 
principles, the mystical, ethical and philo- 
sophical tenets as revealed to Mahomet and 
set down in the ^^ Khourdn '\' secondly, the 
acts, decisions and opinions, the life of 
Mahomet, called ^' Sunna/^ contained In 
the recorded traditions ^^ al Hadith '' of his 
companions and helpers; and thirdly, the 
legislative efforts of the first three genera- 
tions of believers after Mahomet, by unani- 
mous consent ^^ Idjmd '' — fixed into an im- 
mutable legal and social system '' Figh or 
Cheri^a '' by the Masters (Imam, or 
Miidjtahidoun) of the four schools of 
orthodox Mahomedan teaching in the 
second century after the Prophet, closing 
all legislative effort from that time forth, 
except that accomplished by analogy '' Kh'i- 
yaSy^ a process whereby any new meas- 
ure must prove its legal justification by its 
analogy with one or another of the laws 
found in the other three main sources 
of Mahomedan legislation: the Khouran, 

84 



Near Eastern, Problem 

Sunna, and Idjma, analogy ^' Khiyas '' be- 
ing the fourth main source. The lawyers 
and judges of Islam are its priests, and 
the head of this judicial hierarchy was 
first called '' Imdm/^ then ^' Khazi-ul- 
Khouzat '' and at present '' Sheikh-ul-Is- 
lam/' The ^^ Khalifa/' successor of the 
Prophet, ** Commander of the Faithful " 
(^^ Emir-al-Mu'menin'') is the "executive 
head " the " administrator " of Islam, 
which is the Islamic State, whose limits are 
not territorial but which includes the vast 
body of believers throughout all the lands 
of the world. 

The Khalifa, the recognised successor of 
Mahomet, is only the administrator of 
Islam, the highest executive officer of a 
system assumed to be fixed and definitive. 
His duties are, to enforce the laws, and 
maintain in their entirety and integrity the 
doctrines of Islam, to keep and defend 
the possession of all lands which have ever 
fallen under the sword of Islam. He has 
no right under any circumstances to cede 

85 



The Orient Question 

any of such lands or to acknowledge that 
any lands can ever be reconquered from 
Islam. In case nations rise up and throw 
off the Moslem yoke, the Khalifa is still 
bound to assert Islamic sovereignty by fic- 
tion and to impose where possible the sym- 
bol of that persistency by obtaining that 
a mosque shall remain forever in the lost 
lands where, every Friday, the Khalifa is 
to be named in prayers.^ 

The KhaHfa is deposed by '' fetva '' if 
It can be proved that he has violated an 
essential doctrine of Islam. 

For centuries the office of " Khalifa " 
was in the hands of the descendants of 

1 When Hungary after a submission of a hundred 
and fifty years was finally freed from the Turk by 
the treaty of Karlovitz it was stipulated that the Hun- 
garians would always preserve the tomb and small 
memorial mosque at Buda-Pest of a holy moslem, 
Gul-Baba (Father of Roses) and to this day the 
Hungarian Government keeps up this small mosque 
where the name of the Turkish Sultan and Khalifa is 
included in prayer offerings. The same concessions 
have been allowed to the out-going Turk in Servia, 
Rumania, Bulgaria, Greece and other countries which 
were able to make themselves free of the Moslem. 

86 



Near Eastern Problem 

Mahomet and orthodox Moslem even 
to-day contest the right of any person not 
so descended to assume that power as the 
political, religious and social chief-admin- 
istrative head of Islam. The Arabs are 
now at variance with the Ottoman Sultans 
who, since Selim, 15 17, have arrogated 
to themselves the title of Khalifa, as con- 
querors and possessors of the Holy places 
of Mecca and Medina, in virtue of a trans- 
ference to themselves in that year of the 
right by the last Abbasid Khalifa, who was 
the legitimate successor of the Prophet. 
That cession was legalised by a '' fetva ^* 
(formula) issued the same year by the 
Sheikh of Mecca. Since then in spite of 
the traditional requirement that a Khalifa 
must be of the blood of Khoreish, the Sul- 
tans of Turkey have worn the title of 
^' Khalifa ^^ and "Commander of the 
faithful." At that time the Green Flag 
of the Prophet, the ^^ Bariak-al-Shertf," 
with the Mantle and the sealing-ring of 
the Prophet were carried from Mecca to 

87 



The Orient Question 

Constantinople, where they have remained 
to the present time, the sacred symbols of 
Islam throughout all the regions of the 
earth wherever there are Mahomedans. 

Under Mahomet and his immediate 
successors, the conquering Arab hordes 
streamed westward and eastward in two 
armies, one, across Africa to Spain and 
France, the other, towards Constantinople 
and eastward to India. With one vast 
sweep was created the mighty Saracenic 
Empire, held together by the sole force 
of the flame of conquest. Once those 
whirlwinds past and spent, their fires burnt 
out, that empire became dismembered 
with the same rapidity, and there was a 
falling back of the various peoples into 
the temper of their usual existence. But 
the impulse, tremendous if momentary, 
had been sufficient to leave after it that 
structure, which is Islam, and to stimulate 
into action a large intellectual movement 
rousing to remembrance the intellectual 
capacities of peoples, the fragments of na- 

88 



Near Eastern Problem 

tlons who had in the past been the recipi- 
ents of the culture of Hellas, Rome and 
Persia. The Berber, in Spain and north- 
ern Africa, the Persian, the Greco-Syrlac, 
In Asia and Egypt and at the court of the 
Khalifas at Bagdad, revived the traditions 
of the classical period which made of Bag- 
dad, Cairo, Khairowan, Tlemcen, Cordova 
and Sevilla, centres of culture and learn- 
ing. Based on ancient wisdom and Greek 
and Roman classics, that impulse resembled 
somewhat both in origin and inspiration 
phases of the later Italian re-birth of learn- 
ing and art, and though abortive and short- 
lived in comparison, it served the purpose 
of preserving for the later Italian develop- 
ment many Greek and other precious 
works of the golden period of antiquity 
which in Arabic translation, fed the well- 
springs of the Renaissance. 

With the coming of the Ottoman Turk 
the cultural life which had received a stim- 
ulus in a new direction by the Arab con- 
quests was extinguished, Persia, that old 

89 



The Orient Question 

home of Asiatic culture and civilisation, 

was laid to waste. In Syria, Asia Minor, | 

and Egypt the cultural impulse ceased. 

The old saying is, " where the Turk has 

trod no grass grows." 

The Ottoman Turk spread the conquests 
of Islam into Europe, entering the Balkan 
Peninsula, and so was laid the basis of the 
modern Near Eastern Question. 

It has been a subject of wonder that the 
Turks never formed together with the 
races which they conquered an Ottoman 
nation, nor even a Turkish civilisation. 
Their presence proving even destructive 
of the civilisations which they found in 
the lands which they subdued with the 
sword. In England the various successive 
invaders, Saxons, Danes, Normans, etc., 
became assimilated throughout the centu- 
ries with the inhabitants forming a single 
people, enriched by the ideas of each and 
all, with common culture and common na- 
tional life. The same has been true in 
some degree of all other western nations. 

90 



Near Eastern Problem 

But no such assimilation ever occurred or 
could take place between the Turkish Ma- 
homedan conquerors and the non-Moslem 
conquered. It was barred by the essential 
basic principles of the Islamic system. 
The definite setting apart of conqueror 
and conquered was fixed first by the saying 
of Mahomet: — ^^ Oiitroiikii heum va ma 
yedinouney '^ — " Let each stay where he 
belongs " and by the organic statute of 
Mahomedan government expressed by 
Khalifa Omar, in the time of ^^ Idjmd/' 
making the Moslem to remain the superior 
and dominating class — the perpetual sol- 
dier of occupation, whose support had to 
be furnished by the conquered people. All 
assimilation with peoples of other creed 
was impossible, but whoever renounced his 
faith to become a Moslem was thereby in- 
stantly naturalised into Islam receiving the 
status and all life-chances of a born Moslem 
or Osmanli. The impossibility of the fu- 
sion of races held under a Moslem con- 
queror with their Mahomedan lords was 

91 



The Orient Question 

strikingly illustrated in the confession of 
that Sultan in the Seventeenth Century who 
urged that as Moslem victor and Chris- 
tian vanquished could never make one peo- 
ple, Ottoman domination could only be- 
come secure by the universal slaughter of 
all Christians in conquered territory. Up 
to our own time that conclusion has haunted 
Stamboul like an evil dream, whether in 
the palaces of the Sultan and Khalifa, or 
in the Committee of Progress and Union. 
There is in Islam a tenet called the law 
of Constraint {'' Ikhrdh^') the practical 
effect of which is to justify any action of 
the Mahomedan individual or community 
performed under coercion. The same 
law exacts that the instant the pres- 
sure of coercion is relieved the true 
Moslem must revert to the conduct 
prescribed in Islam. This process explains 
why it was that Europe never obtained 
anything from Turkey except by coercion, 
and could never secure any permanent re- 
sults, as what was gained disappeared in- 

92 



Near Eastern Problem 

stantly upon the withdrawal of the coercive 
measures. The frequent massacres in 
olden and modern times, the Bulgarian 
atrocities, the Armenian massacres, the 
recent massacres of Adana, the Mace- 
donian tortures and outrages attest to the 
principle of wholesale slaughter as a politi- 
cal means of Moslem government and dis- 
cipline, justified in Islam by the law of 
Constraint. The Moslem in his turn does 
not expect any other treatment from his 
Christian rulers. This tenet obtains in the 
English tenure in Egypt and the Moslem 
parts of India, France's tenure in Algeria, 
Tunis, and Morocco, Italy's presence in 
Tripoli and the rule of Russia over her 
Moslem subjects. The nature of this law 
was illustrated by the question asked and 
answer given in 1862 when the French 
government having subdued Algeria, ob- 
tained from the Sheikhs of Mecca a 
'' fetva '^ permitting Algerian Moslems to 
accept the French rule. 

In Turkey, the Christian and Hebrew 

93 



The Orient Question 

communities were formed under their sev- 
eral religious heads into nations, ^' Milets '' 
virtually considered alien, subordinated to 
the Moslems. The mere fact of being a 
Moslem gave to the individual the right 
of authority over all non-Moslems in all 
circumstances. All the affairs of personal 
status among non-Moslems were regulated 
by their own Church hierarchy: marriage, 
death, inheritance, litigations among them- 
selves, etc., but all which depended upon 
the status realis was ruled by the Cheriy 
the Mahomedan sacred law. They pos- 
sessed real estate property only by toler- 
ance. Among the taxes which they had to 
pay was one called " the tax giving them 
permission to walk on the Sultan's land '' 
i. e. " Islam's land." They formed a 
State within a State, tolerated, but without 
rights, without redress for any act com- 
mitted against them by any citizen of Is- 
lam and having only duties and obligations 
to perform. 

Under such a system based. In regard to 
94 



Near Eastern Problem! 

all non-Moslems, upon the dogma of in- 
equality before the law, it is easy to see 
that a modern constitution, with equality 
before the law, equal rights of citizens, 
etc., and all other fundamental principles 
of a modern State-formation, can only re- 
main a dead-letter. The two principles, 
one the fundamental basis of the Ottoman 
State or any other Moslem State, a princi- 
ple embodied in their faith, recognising 
only Moslems as citizens, — the other, a 
fundamental principle of the modern consti- 
tutional State, guaranteeing equality to all 
men, are in diametrical opposition to each 
other. Experience has shown the truth 
of this in the recent experiment of the Ot- 
toman constitution, which perforce became 
a farce, a game of confidence played upon 
a too credulous Western world, with the 
object of eluding foreign pressure for the 
cessation of conditions of chronic anarchy 
in Turkey and internal reforms to make 
tolerable the existence of the non-Moslem 
population. The savage methods em- 

95 



The Orient Question 

ployed by the Young Turks after the 
proclamation of the Turkish constitution 
and the inauguration of the rule of the 
Committee of Progress and Union, were 
in keeping with the Moslem principle — 
and showed that the well-considered words 
of the constitution were only cynical means 
of placating Europe not meant to be taken 
seriously or literally by the Christians. 
The methods " of discipline " employed, 
savage and wholesale, the reports of which 
filled the columns of the London Times, 
were only the ordinary means of the Otto- 
man government to impress the Christians 
with the realisation that their status had 
not changed by the Constitution, that they 
were still the rayah, the rightless, tolerated 
mass, and the Moslem, still the over-lord 
and master. 

Even In purely Mahomedan countries, 
like Persia, any attempt at a constitutional 
form of government must break down, al- 
though there may be no problem of sub- 
ject races, by reason of the Inflexibility of 

96 



Near Eastern Problem 

the system Irrevocably fixed so many cen- 
turies ago in the midst of conditions dif- 
fering radically from those of the modern 
world and not admitting of amendment or 
extension except by means of the legislative 
effort determined by analogy (khiyas). 
How can a Parliament express the will of 
a people if that people's will be bound in 
advance? A Moslem ruler, however des- 
potic he may be, is himself bound to ob- 
serve the absolute prescriptions of that 
sacred law, whose expounder-in-chlef, to- 
day called the Sheikh-ul-Islam, assisted by 
his *' learned " Ulemas, keeps vigilant 
watch over the edicts of that law and whose 
opinion expressed In a formula called 
*' fetva'' the ruler Is obliged to follow un- 
der the penalty of being deposed as an 
" unbeliever." 

Mahomet, the Prophet, consulted certain 
of his companions upon all matters which 
were not especially revealed to him, and 
in regard to the application of the Heavenly 
order which he received by revelation. 

97 



The Orient Question 

That precedent then estabHshed has ruled 
ever since in Islam. Ahmed Rifaat in the 
Encyclopedia of Islam cites the following 
case: — " Khalifa Al-Mansour, the second 
Abbasid Khalifa, planned a military expe- 
dition against the town of Mossoul. Be- 
fore setting out, he called together the 
jurisconsults "as the law required;" and 
demanded from them the formula, which 
should authorise him to undertake that 
campaign. His reasons were found to be 
nul (batil) . The ^* fetva'^ was rendered 
consequently in the negative, the Khalifa 
submitted to the verdict and the expedition 
was abandoned. Which distinctly proves 
that even the first Khalifas were chained 
by doctrinal advice. The '' fetva '' is the 
doctrinal advice given by the jurisconsults 
and corresponds somewhat to the formula 
of the Roman Praetor. The Arabic word 
'^ fetva '' existed long before the time of 
Mahomet and was a legal term signifying 
the answer to a question on a point of 
law, given by a legal authority. The 

98 



Near Eastern Problem 

words of the Khoiirdn establishing the 
form of the fetva begins: — " Yesteftouney 
kay " (they ask you an advice) '^ Gool 
Illahou youftikoun jilV (say to them God 
has given an advice on . . .). 

A parliament expressing the will of the 
people in constitutional States, whether 
republics or monarchies can create a law 
and pass it, and have it enacted and exe- 
cuted even against the will of the Chief- 
executive, by certain means provided for 
in that constitution. Such a course would 
be entirely out of question in a Mahom- 
edan country. A Moslem parliament 
could a la rigeiir, act without the approval 
of the Moslem sovereign, but its enactments 
would be illegal and worthless, unable to 
be enforced without the ^^ fetva '^ or sanc- 
tion of the ^^ Sheikh-ul-Isldm/' The ex- 
planation of that situation is: that the 
period of '^ idjmd '^ or direct legislative 
effort by universal consent, having been 
closed since the second century after 
Mahomet, no legislation by a parliament 

99 



The Orient Question 

could be accomplished by any other means 
than that of the " legislative effort " de- 
nominated "analogy'' (khiyas), it lies 
with the Shelkh-ul-Islam to pronounce upon 
such enactments as to whether or not they 
satisfy the demands of analogy and there- 
fore prove their basis in Islam. The 
^' fetva '^ of the Shelkh-ul-Islam must be 
accepted by all Moslems under the penalty 
of excommunication. 

The spectacle in Turkey and Persia fur- 
nishes only too ample proofs of the impo- 
tence of parliamentary legislation In Mos- 
lem lands. It is hardly necessary to recall 
the vain attempts at reform In Turkey, 
Persia, Morocco and other lands of Is- 
lam, and the Incapacity of those States to 
create a well-ordered government with con- 
ditions of security for life and property 
able to develop on lines of modern progress 
and civilisation. Wherever Islamic con- 
quests found higher civilisations, it stunted 
them or ruined their further progress. 
Prince Malcom Khan, for nearly forty 

100 



Near Eastern Problem' 

years Persian Minister Plenipotentiary in 
Europe, a Persian patriot, and a man of 
great learning and European culture, said 
that Mahomedanism has wrecked Persia 
and brought that country to utter ruin. 
He said that: '^ that as the forgotten cities 
of ancient Persia had been overwhelmed 
and covered from sight by the drifting 
desert sands, with only a protruding dome 
or corner to mark their burial places, so 
the Moslem system had overwhelmed the 
Persian nation, wrapping it in fatalistic 
inaction and corrupt quiescence until it ex- 
isted only as a sign-post of the past." He 
himself was at the head of a movement 
which attempted to revive a purified 
Zoroastrism combined with Christianity, as 
a sole remaining hope and means of re- 
generating Persia and re-kindling the na- 
tional Persian spirit of a great past. For 
it must be borne in mind that the mighty 
Persia of old, the Persia of antique gran- 
deur, was not Mahomedan, but possessed 
a beautiful national faith, the Arian faith 

lOI 



The Orient Question 

of Zoroaster, expressed in the Zend-Avesta. 
Persia never passed into Christianity, and 
up to the period of its conquest by Islam 
it possessed a national ideal in faith, cul- 
ture and government. The modern Per- 
sian, a schismatic in Islam is the sign of 
anti-Moslem sentiment whose stubborn, if 
sporadic, manifestations of resistance have 
torn the nation into various sects — shreds 
of a dismembered people. 

Those interested in Persian persistency 
cannot afford to blind their eyes to these 
considerations or to the fact that from the 
moment of the coming of Moslem mastery 
in Persia, its rulers have never been na- 
tional, but always foreign, from the Arabs 
and others to the Seldjuk Turks, on down 
to the Khadjar Turk of to-day. 

The dream of Islamic conquest and the 
re-establishment of a great Islamic State 
and the idea of a world Khalifat is promul- 
gated by the religious brotherhoods like 
the Khadrias and the Senussis, mystic as- 

102 



Near Eastern Problem 

sociations with political objects. The first 
of these brotherhoods was created in the 
eighteenth century of our era, the other, 
in modern times by the Sheikh-al-Senussi 
in Algeria in re-action against the French 
conquests in Northern Africa. The Se- 
nussi are a powerful fighting order created 
for resistance to non-Moslem invasion, and 
with the militant object of converting all 
lands of the world to the faith of the 
Prophet. The Sheikh-el-Senussi, claiming 
descent from Fatima, the daughter of 
Mahomet, appears to have rights to the 
Khalifat superior to those of the Turkish 
Sultan. Another wing of the Islamic 
C' Pan-Islamic ") revival Is found in the 
so-called westernised Moslems or Young 
Turks, no less fanatic In loyalty to Islam, 
but professing other methods than those 
of the mystic brotherhoods. These 
'' Westerners '* or Young Turks repose 
upon conceptions of reforms and organised 
State which, however, contains the self-an- 
nulling elements of contradiction, as their 

103 



The Orient Question 

State — a hybrid creation — would not be 
based either upon modern constitutionalism 
or entirely upon the historic interpretation 
of Islam. Although there have been ear- 
nest and dignified figures among them, 
in general, their methods of propaganda 
include press-campaigning, public pose, 
self-advertisement, and theatrical clam- 
our, which joined to an air of self-suffi- 
ciency causes their plans and work to be 
regarded In Europe as more or less harm- 
less. 

The signs of the time, however, must 
not be misread. Islam, a failure where 
higher civilisation is concerned, is an edu- 
cational force of vitality where lower civi- 
lisations or savages come under its sway. 
The spread of Islam in Asia, India and 
China, especially in Africa among the Ne- 
gro tribes, Is amazing. There, the work 
of the Christian missionary disappears as 
chaff before the wind. The attempt of 
Christian missionaries to convert Moslems 
is a labour of Sisyphus. Witness the utter 

104 



Near Eastern Problem 

failure of Cardinal Lavigerie's work in Al- 
geria, where the famine of 1870 had given 
him children and orphans as converts, 
and the story of the Franciscan missions 
in Morocco. The Protestant missions 
fare no better. Whatever the underlying 
causes of these failures may be, among 
the many theories adduced, including that 
one illustrated by the answer of the South 
African black-man when questioned on the 
subject: — "They (the different sects and 
missionaries) have not yet settled among 
themselves what it is. When they get it 
and give it to us we will take it," the 
fact remains, that meanwhile they are leav- 
ing fetishism and embracing Mahomedan- 
ism, which, at least, is a destroyer of idols 
in Africa as it was In Asia. Islam brings 
to the savage, an ideal more within his 
scope of understanding, a civilisation, a so- 
cial status and organisations. Christian- 
ity brings him principles and conceptions 
of high philosophy which he cannot under- 
stand. 

105 



The Orient Question 

So in China, in Asia and in Africa down 
to Cape Colony, Mahomedanism spreads, 
enlarging the realm of Islam, and car- 
riers of the Khouran, or as they announce 
themselves, the *' Comers before Con- 
quest," go before the " Bariak-al-Sherif " 
the Green Flag of the Prophet, the visible 
sign of Moslem Empire and Rule — Is- 
lam. 

Therein lies the question of the future 
of Africa to-day, the colonising experiment 
of Europe; will it be a white-man's land, 
developed by colonial expansion. Christian 
and Western in civilisation, or will it be 
the land of the Black — The Empire of 
Islam to-morrow? 

C. LOCAL ASPECT OF THE NEAR EAST- 
ERN PROBLEM. 

By the beginning of the fourteenth 
century the Turkish Dynasty of Osman 
had succeeded in creating a military and 
theocratic Osmanli State in Asia Minor. 
This work had been accomplished ruth- 

io6 



Near Eastern Problem 

lessly by fire and sword, massacre and dev- 
astation. All civilisation and fragments 
of past peoples which they found in their 
path were relentlessly destroyed and their 
national conscience obliterated by the ex- 
tinction of their cultural traditions and 
learning, and the forced imposition of the 
Turkish tongue, a language possessing no 
literary means of expression.^ 

The original invading horde (of Erthro- 
gul in the thirteenth century), said to have 
been not more than one thousand strong, 
had ceaselessly swollen its ranks to a dom- 
inating size by terrorising the masses of 
the inhabitants into forced allegiance to 
Islam. Its fighting forces were formed 
and recruited in the main from vast num- 
bers of young boys, who were carried away 
from their parents in infancy and carefully 
trained up to the sole business of organised 
slaughter and the lust of conquest. So 
was created that perpetual army of occu- 

1 The Turkish literature is forced to borrow from 
the Arabic and Persian in order to arrive at expres- 
sion. 

107 



The Orient Question 

patlon and ravage called the Osmanli na- 
tion. 

During the history of the Turks In Asia 
and their stay in Europe, they created no 
culture, no monuments of civilisation, nor 
art; they have given to the world no statue, 
no picture, no music, no poem, no play, no 
architecture, no social grandeur, no cre- 
ative statesmanship. The minaret, frail 
as the voice of the muezzin, and poetic as 
his call, was borrowed from other nations. 
Even In turning Santa Sophia into a 
mosque, the Saints on the walls, rich in 
coloured and golden mosaic, were white- 
washed over and dimmed from sight. 

Like a plague of locusts the Moslem 
masters fed upon the treasures of the fields 
which they left bare, and to-day the Turk, 
finally packing back across the Bosporus 
in the receding Osmanli tide eastwards, 
leaves behind him nought but vast mourn- 
ful stretches of untilled land, whose caked 
soil grips the vestiges of the ruin he 
wrought. The broken cart-wheels and 

1 08 



Near Eastern Problem 

over-turned cars, miserable roads, the 
wretched huts, the crumbling bridges and 
decaying remains of the civilisations he 
found, — all. In the track of the Turk, is 
rotting wreck and desolation. 

In 1355 the Osmanlls crossed the Dar- 
danelles to the European shores of the 
Marmara Sea, occupied Galllpoll and forti- 
fied themselves at Bulalr on the small neck 
of the peninsula, and thenceforward for 
the next centuries the destinies of the Bal- 
kan lands and of all Europe moved In a 
changed course. From that first foot-hold 
in Europe they slowly, step by step, crushed 
the Christian States In the Balkans and 
finally, at the end of the fifteenth century, 
after having gained possession of the last 
Servian State, they were able In a single 
battle to overthrow the Hungarian King- 
dom, and for the next one hundred and 
sixty years their border of empire was 
near the walls of Vienna. During that 
time the Hapsburg ruler payed tribute to 

109 



The Orient Question 

the Sultan at Constantinople. Then was 
the period of the greatest extent of the 
Osmanli realm, stretching far over Syria, 
into Arabia, Egypt and the coast of North- 
ern Africa; the Ottoman fleet and pirate 
ships making the Mediterranean Sea and 
its coasts their play-ground. The wars of 
1683-89 marked the turning point. Up 
to then, the efforts of Europe were directed 
toward withstanding the tide of Turkish 
conquest. With those wars the receding 
of Turkish power began, and step by step 
as they had come, so they began to depart, 
and to-day before our own eyes. In disor- 
dered array, the vestiges of that Invasion, 
asking vain aid of the old walls at Bulair, 
their first fortress and sign of the yoke they 
laid upon the land, are making their way 
back across the Marmara to Asia, driven 
by the soldiers of the Allied Nations of the 
Balkans. 

When the Turk entered Europe he 
found there the territorial remainder of 

no 



Near Eastern Problem 

the Roman Empire of the East, with all its 
vast culture, the continuation of Rome and 
Greece. There was a Bulgarian King- 
dom, with its culture developing on lines 
radiating from Bysanz, stretching over 
Danubean Bulgaria and Southern Bulgaria 
on both slopes of the Balkans. There 
were the independent Greek Principalities 
and Duchies, still full of the echoes of the 
glories that were Hellas. There was the 
Servian Empire, composed of the various 
Servian Kingdoms stretching from the 
Adriatic to near Salonika, englobing Al- 
bania in the West, and parts of old 
Bysanz in the East. A State-formation 
which from its inception was always a con- 
stitutional Monarchy, having a Parliament. 
The Serb Jury was an old institution 
and in the Servian Codex of Laws, com- 
piled by the Emperor Dushan in 1346, 
there was guarantee to every citizen of 
equality before the law. The Sovereign, 
King or Emperor, was not above the law, 
and could be sued in the Courts of Justice 

III 



The Orient Question 

by the humblest of his subjects, see Art. 
139-171-172 of that Codex. ^ In the 
arts of peace the Servians of that time 
were far advanced. Latin and Greek 
classics were translated long before Italy 
began its renaissance and many Servians 
took part in that cultural re-birth, be- 
ing counted among the Italians of that 
period. The Hospice, to-day belonging to 
the Russians in Jerusalem, was built and 
founded by Servian rulers of the Middle 
Ages. 

For a hundred and fifty years the Turks 
had to fight before they could overcome the 
Balkan nations. One by one those Chris- 
tian peoples lost their State-formations, 
their sovereignty as nations being forced 
into abeyance by the Asiatic conqueror. 
First the Bulgar, then the Greek and 
Bysantine, the Albanian; and finally, the 
last Servian State-formation, had fallen, 
but for all that, the Turk had not entirely 

1 See " The Servian People," pp. 270-271. 
112 



Near Eastern Problem 

conquered the nation nor subdued its spirit. 
In the rocky fastnesses of the Black Moun- 
tains, later called by Europe Montenegro, 
the Servian defied the Turk and was un- 
conquered. It is the pride to-day of the 
Serb to point to many a rocky dell in 
the mountains of the Serb block of terri- 
tory, even beyond the Black Mountains, 
where never the foot of Turk has trod, 
eyries where the Servian eagle awaited the 
time when he could again take flight and 
soar in freedom over his lands. 

Continually throughout that century and 
a half of defence against Turkish on- 
slaught, the Balkan peoples, Greek, Bul- 
gar and Serb sought in vain the help and 
aid of Europe. Not only was that aid 
denied to them, but as their forces were 
fully engaged in the endeavour to beat back 
the Turkish attack, the moment was seized 
upon by certain western powers as propi- 
tious opportunity for territorial aggran- 
disement at their expense. So Venice, 
Hungary and Austria were the willing aids 

113 



The Orient Question 

of the Turkish conquerors, unmindful that 
their turn might come later, and come, it 
did, Hungary became the prey of the Turk. 
During the following three centuries up 
to the French revolution, the Serbs, and 
also the Greeks, whose spirit of independ- 
ence the Turk was never able to crush 
out, were the willing allies of every Euro- 
pean power that warred against the Turk. 
They fought, hoping to regain their lost 
liberties, and trusting in the assurances they 
received from different powers, who made 
use of their assistance. Serbs composed 
the armies which defended Vienna; Serbs 
formed the troops which in the years 1683- 
89 broke Turkey's power of advance, and 
caused the Osmanli hosts to fall back; 
Serbs were the soldiers of Austria, of 
Venice, of Spain, and with Albanians and 
Greeks together they were the soldiers of 
Naples; each war of Russia, of Austria, of 
Spain, Venice and Naples, found its echo 
in the Balkans, and revolts and insurrec- 
tions shook the Ottoman power. The 

114 



Near Eastern Problem 

most terrific of those convulsions was that 
of St. Sava. In that insurrection, the Serbs, 
in 1597 to 1606 in aid of the Austro- 
Spanish-Turkish war, rose against the Turk 
and for a time held all the lands west of 
Sophia clear from Ottoman troops. But, 
as it always happened in Austro-Serb re- 
lations, they were abandoned by Austria, 
when she made peace with the Turks. 
The Balkan peoples in those three hundred 
years of revolts and risings had well-tested 
the faith of the Western nations, for whom 
they had spilt their blood. In return for 
promises of arms, ammunition and funds as 
well as of military aid in their fight against 
the Turks, which was logically also the bat- 
tle of Christendom, they repeatedly un- 
dertook risings, often at moments ill- 
chosen so far as concerned their own in- 
terests, but dictated by the plans of their 
European allies. Those promises were 
never kept or else were but lamely fulfilled. 
Austria, Venice, Spain and even Russia 
failed to keep faith, and clearly they had 

115 



The Orient Question 

no intention of helping the insurgents to 
regain their lost freedom and re-establish 
independent States. 

Characteristic of the dealings of Austria 
with Servia was the fate in 1689 ^^ ^^^ 
Serb Prince George III. Brankovich who, 
relying upon the promises made by the 
Austrian ruler that he would help to es- 
tablish an independent Servia, called the 
Serbs to arms against the Sultan. In an- 
swer to his proclamation of freedom for 
the Servians, the Hapsburg Emperor or- 
dered his arrest and held him in prison to 
the end of his life, a captivity of twenty- 
two years. 

In the eighteenth century the ideas of 
partitioning European Turkey between 
Russia and Austria, superseded all other 
plans, and the Balkan nations were drawn 
into the game played between Austria and 
Russia. The faith in foreign help had 
already vanished; the Serbs and the Greeks 
began to look more to their own efforts 
than to help from the outside. 

116 



Near Eastern Problem 

Up to the end of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, the Turks were almost the only power 
In Europe which possessed a strong and 
well-organised regular army. From the in- 
ception of a Turkish State they owned that 
force in the janissaries, a military organ- 
isation formed to be the fiercest legion 
known to history. All the other Euro- 
pean powers, perhaps with the exception 
of Venice and Spain, began only after the 
thirty years war to organise their fighting 
forces on the basis of a formally consti- 
tuted standing army instead of the mer- 
cenary troops of the condottiere and the 
feudal levies. The end of the seventeenth 
century saw the Turkish janissaries In 
many an engagement opposed and de- 
feated by those new regular troops. 

The periodical Insurrections of the 
Serbs, the never-ceasing guerilla warfare 
of the Servian Haydouks and Ouskoks, the 
Bulgarian Hillmen and the Klephts of the 
Greeks, since the days when their several 
sovereign State-formations had been over- 

117 



The Orient Question 

thrown, contributed powerfully to that 
chronic state of anarchy in the Ottoman 
realm and the penury of the Osmanli 
treasury. 

Much-cited descriptions in the sixteenth 
and seventeenth centuries by German and 
French Ambassadors to the Sublime Porte 
of their journeys through Turkey, record 
the necessity of strong Turkish military 
guards along the highways. Certain direct 
roads had to be avoided in order to go out 
of the way of robber-bands, and it was 
necessary, as explained to them by the 
Turks, to fortify and double-guard the vil- 
lages and places where they rested, lest 
the bands should swoop down upon them 
during the night, although the escort num- 
bered several hundred janissaries. Those 
reports give vivid and realistic pictures of 
the unsubdued state of the country inhab- 
ited by Serbs and the conditions of in- 
security to the conqueror, even on the great 
beaten paths from Belgrade to Sophia, 
which was the road of the Turkish armies 

ii8 



Near Eastern Problem 

from Asia and Constantinople to the bat- 
tle-fields of Hungary and the walls of 
Vienna. 

Only during two short periods of time, 
was the Turkish State somewhat free from 
those turbulent conditions : — under the 
Grand- Vezirat of Mehemet Sokolovlch in 
the reign of Suleyman the Magnificent, 
and under the Grand- Vezirat of Mohamed 
Kuprlll, In the reign of Sultan Mohamed 
IV. 

The defeat of the Ottomans at the end 
of the seventeenth century, the loss of 
Hungary, and the fixing of their borders 
on the Sava and Danube Rivers, brought 
the Balkan peoples Into nearer contact with 
Austria and Russia. Up to that time the 
Serbs were unable to oppose organised 
forces to those of Turkey, but during the 
period of the eighteenth century, which 
in Europe — also In Austria and Russia 
— saw the development of the standing 
army, many Serbs took service In those 
armies, and during the Austrian and Rus- 

119 



The Orient Question 

sian wars with Turkey in that century, the 
Servian and Greek volunteers were trained 
according to military science, not more left 
to fight in the old irregular way, but en- 
regimented into properly constituted for- 
mations, and so came into possession and 
practice of the knowledge of military or- 
ganisation. The knowledge of the use of 
artillery, the use of cavalry in masses, and 
infantry and its fire in ordered line, was 
spread in their own countries by those 
volunteers on their return home after the 
wars.^ 

So it came about that at the end of the 
eighteenth century, during the revolt of 
Pasvan Oglou against the Sultan, when the 
Pasha of Belgrade called upon the Serb- 
head-men to provide some Serb fighting 
men in aid of the imperial troops, the Serb 

1 That return was made possible by an amnesty- 
clause which, wiser than in former centuries, they had 
stipulated to be inserted in the Peace-treaties, before 
consenting to enlist as they had done of old, so will- 
ingly and spontaneously. Also the Turk was in neces- 
sity of them to till the fields and pay taxes. 

I 20 



Near Eastern Problem 

was able to put into the field some bat- 
talions of infantry, well organised and 
drilled and commanded in the western 
style and manner, to the absolute astonish- 
ment of the Turks. 

Anarchy in Turkey came to a climax at 
the end of the eighteenth century. The 
events contributing to that result were : the 
Russo-Turkish war, ending in the treaty 
of Kutchuk Kainardji in 1774, which gave 
Russia the right to intervene in the affairs 
of Turkey as protector of the Orthodox 
Christians; followed by the Austro-Rus- 
sian-Turkish war which ended in 1792 with 
new territorial losses to Russia; and after 
that, the French expedition to Egypt under 
Bonaparte; in 1798, revolts of the Wa- 
habit sect of Islamic reformers in Arabia; 
the revolts in Syria ; and finally, the recog- 
nition by Sultan Selim of the necessity of 
reforming the administration and army sys- 
tem, tardy attempts at which made the con- 
ditions of anarchy complete. Following 
Selim's ineffectual efforts of reform, each 

121 



The Orient Question 

Pasha governing in his Pashalik, undertook 
to make himself independent of the Sultan, 
supported in that attempt by the janis- 
saries, whom the Sultan had decided to 
suppress and replace by troops levied and 
trained according to the new methods of 
the European armies. The resultant up- 
heaval throughout Turkey was accom- 
panied by violences against Christian popu- 
lations. In Servia, in the Pashalik of 
Belgrade, the spectacle of the capacity of 
the Serb to bring organised troops to the 
aid of the Pasha, was the signal to attempt 
the disarming of the people which was be- 
gun with fierce and relentless energy. The 
Serbs answered by insurrection, which had 
been secretly long foreseen and prepared 
for. The battle of Ivankovatz, in 1806, 
where a Turkish army of 40,000 men were 
defeated by some few thousands of Serbs 
with only one cannon, was the turning 
point in the history of the Balkan nations. 
The battle of freedom had begun, the bat- 
tle to recall from abeyance the national 

122 



Near Eastern Problem 

sovereignty so long over-ridden by Turkish 
domination. No longer expecting help 
from a foreign State, whose battles they 
had won, nor looking for delivery from 
the outside, but setting themselves firmly to 
fight for their own homes, their old ideals, 
their nationality, the Serbs bent their full 
forces in a supreme effort to throw off the 
Ottoman yoke. 

A new era of nation-making was dawn- 
ing in the Balkans. 

For eleven years from 1804 to 18 15, 
first, under the skilled leadership of the 
brave mountaineer, Kara George, the 
Serbs defeated the Turkish forces, one 
after another; then, being overwhelmed 
in 1 8 13, by a Turkish army far superior in 
numbers, they rose again in 18 15, under 
the leadership of another mountaineer, 
Milosh Obrenovich, and drove the Turk 
from the Pashalik of Belgrade for good. 
The modern State of Servia was founded 
and that small part of the old Servian 
realm became the nucleus of the entire re- 

123 



The Orient Question 

demption of the Serblands, which began 
piece by piece to be won back under the 
national flag. 

During that war of liberation, the Serb 
had shown not only valour and bravery on 
the battle-field, but the capacity to organ- 
ise a State. 

Two years later, in 1817, the famous 
Hetnike Hetaira was founded by Greek 
merchants and refugees in various Euro- 
pean cities. In 1821 Ypsilanti raised the 
standard of revolt, was followed by Arch- 
bishop Germanos, Kolkotronis, Mavrom- 
ichalis, Kanaris and others ; the Turks were 
driven out of Greece and the war raged 
with changing success and failure till in 
1828 France, England and Russia inter- 
vened and in 1830, constituted the modern 
Kingdom of Greece. 

The spirit of nationality, which thus in- 
spired, first the Serbs in their successful 
wresting of the Pashalik of Belgrade out 
of Turkish hands ; then the Greeks, in earn- 
ing their freedom, interposed a check upon 

124 



Near Eastern Problem 

the various projects for the partition of 
Turkey, between Austria and Russia. That 
principle, in its assertion of the will of the 
people as the root of sovereignty, ran 
counter to the theory of the divine right of 
Kings, which was expounded and re-pro- 
claimed by Austria and her Chancellor 
Metternich and made the corner-stone of 
European and world status at the Con- 
gresses of Vienna, Laibach and Verona. 
It was the era of treaty-obligations, iden- 
tified with government by divine institu- 
tion, solidarity among the powers for the 
observance of those treaties and the up- 
holding of governments and government- 
systems as guaranteed by those treaties, 
even against the will of the governed. A 
theory which has ever and ever again re- 
curred in history under various guises. 
In our time, it steals in under the 
cloak of the project of a world-police- 
force to coerce for world-peace. Such 
peace plans all conceive that a people might 
become dissatisfied with its government and 

125 



The Orient Question 

attempt its overthrow by revolution; those 
plans would provide against that eventual- 
ity, some quite frankly stating that the 
international police force would be em- 
ployed in case of revolt against any gov- 
ernment at the demand of the government 
in occupation. Such, too, was the theory 
of Metternich a hundred years ago. Rev- 
olution and the right of a people to assert 
its will was a crime. 

The antagonism between England and 
Russia, England, seeing in Russian advance 
a menace to India, brought England to the 
side of Austria in all that concerned Tur- 
key, who could generally rely also on 
French support. The integrity of the 
Turkish dominions, was the rule laid down, 
and in the interior affairs of Turkey, Aus- 
tria, England and France stood for the 
suppression of all moves toward the libera- 
tion of the Christian peoples, while Rus- 
sia saw her interest in their advance and 
escape from Ottoman rule. The ulterior 
motives of one and all were similar, and 

126 



Near Eastern Problem 

aimed at the partition of Turkey, each ex- 
pecting to obtain his share Iii Its final dis- 
tribution. Russia's plan was to help the 
Balkan people and bind them to her, hop- 
ing in time, by gratitude to gather them 
in. England's plan was to hold Russia 
back barring her way through the Straits 
of the Bosporus and Dardanelles. Aus- 
tria's aim was the same : by intrigue, prom- 
ise, threat and gradual military occupation, 
to fall sole heir to the " Sick-man's " In- 
heritance and Incidentally to earn the grati- 
tude of the governments of western Europe 
for effectively restraining Russia. 

Those policies led to recommendations 
to the Turks of all kind of reforms and 
offers of help In their practical execution, 
coupled with Interference In the Interior 
affairs of the Independent Balkan States 
such as Servia, Montenegro, Wallachia 
and Moldavia, and Greece. In every one 
of those countries there soon appeared a 
party which took Its cues from an Aus- 
trian, English or French diplomatic rep- 

127 



The Orient Question 

resentative; another party which listened 
to the Russian wishes. In Servia and in 
the other countries, Austria and England 
stood for absolute government and anti- 
parliamentarism, while Russia stood for 
constitutional government and weak central 
authority. 

The reforms failed in Turkey and po- 
litical turmoil was the rule in the Balkan 
States. 

The Turkish reform proclamation of 
1835, the " Tanzimat," and the reform 
proclamation of 1856 called " Hatti Hou- 
mayoun " although failures, were used to 
fortify the demand for the status quo and 
the integrity of Turkey, put forward as 
justifications of the Anglo-Franco-Turkish 
Alliance against Russia in the Crimean 
war, and opened the money markets of Eu- 
rope to the Turkish Government and its 
officials. Conditions in the interior ad- 
ministration were not improved and re- 
mained as they had been since the days 

128 



Near Eastern Problem 

when the Turks had come and conquered 
those lands. 



The fall of Prince Alexander Karage- 
orgevlch In Servia, his replacement by 
Prince Mllosh Obrenovlch, who upon his 
death was succeeded by his son Prince 
Michael, placed at the head of the Servian 
nation a man full of energy with great na- 
tional ambitions ably aided by his minister 
Illya Garashanln. He was able to hold 
Servia free for some time from the re- 
sults of the rival intrigues of Austria, 
England and Russia, and entered Into un- 
derstandings with Bulgars, Albanians, 
Greeks and Bosnians for a common attempt 
at the final overthrow of Turkey. His ac- 
cession coincided with the Cretan insurrec- 
tion of 1858. National agitation began 
to revive In the Balkans. The time was 
well chosen for agitation as Europe was 
occupied in watching first Italy, then Ger- 
many, In the making of their nations, and 
as Austria was the power at whose expense 

129 



The Orient Question 

that nation-making was proceeding, she 
was forced to momentarily withdraw her 
interference in the interior affairs of the 
Balkans. Hayduks and insurrectionary 
bands began to overrun Herzegovina and 
Bulgaria. Montenegro's success against 
the Ottomans resulting in extension of bor- 
ders, gave new courage to the Serbs still 
under Turkey and awakened national spirit 
among the Bulgarians. Finally, by 1870, 
the Servian Government, with the aid of 
Russia had succeeded in obtaining from 
the Sultan the creation of a " Slavonic 
Exarch " to be the head of the Slavs in 
Turkey proper. Servia and her statesmen 
like Garashanin and Ristich, were then still 
under the influence of the " liberal move- 
ment " of 1848, the movement of " Gross- 
Deutschland " of Germany and of a greater 
" Slavia " among the dreamy Slavs, so that 
the narrower national point of view was 
entirely lost sight of in Servia. The cre- 
ation of the '' Slavonic Exarch " which the 
Serbs had worked for, was meant to be a 

130 



Near Eastern Problem 

means of protection and national growth 
to all Slavs in Turkey whether Serb or 
Bulgar. But the young Bulgarian people, 
just awakening from a sleep of centuries, 
had its nation still to make and was in- 
spired with no such idealistic conceptions 
of a kind of cosmopolitan Slavia to be in 
common between all Balkan Slavs. The 
Bulgars recognised in the Slavonic Exarch 
simply an instrument of national Bulgarian 
propaganda ready to hand, with the result 
that the Slavonic Exarch became by rapid 
degrees the " Bulgarian Exarch." 

The timely assassination, timely for* 
Austria, of Prince Michael of Servia, 
stopped the national movement for a time, 
but that movement, like phoenix from 
ashes again arose some years later, with 
the Herzegovinian insurrection and the 
Bulgarian revolt, followed by the war of 
Servia and Montenegro against Turkey 
in support of that insurrection, which 
brought in its train the Russo-Turkish 
war, closed by the Berlin Congress. A 

131 



The Orient Question 

Bulgarian State was now created and 
came Into the comity of independent Bal- 
kan States, Servia, Montenegro, Rumania 
and Greece, which had already succeeded 
in winning freedom and forming them- 
selves out of portions of the territories be- 
longing to their nations, the sovereignty 
of which had been lost by the Turkish 
conquest. 

Austria's occupation of Bosnia and 
Herzegovina as the mandatory of the 
powers, was a check to the dreams and 
plans of liberation of the peoples of the 
Balkans, and was accompanied by a new 
period of intrigues, a foreign pulling and 
hauling in the Interior political affairs of 
the Balkan countries. The miserable in- 
terior conditions in Servia and Greece and 
the overthrow of Alexander of Battenberg 
in Bulgaria were the results of those for- 
eign efforts to crush Balkan Independ- 
ence In the egg. With the object of 
preventing a united working between Bul- 

132 



Near Eastern Problem 

garia and Servia, Austria Induced King 
Milan to undertake the war against Bul- 
garia in 1886, that act of folly, injurious 
to Servian national Interests, was in keep- 
ing with the secret treaty by which King 
Milan had already In 1882, bound himself 
and his dynasty to do the Austrian bid- 
ding.^ 

Austria to-day, is playing the same game 
In Rumania where by means of influence 
In Rumanian politics, she is attempting 

1 That convention made by King Milan and his 
Foreign Minister without the knowledge of the other 
Ministers practically put Servia in a position of an 
Austrian dependency. It was kept strictly secret, its 
existence being unknown not only to the public but 
even to succeeding Cabinets, and from that time until 
the wiping out of the last Obrenovich with the as- 
sassination of King Alexander in 1903 the Servian 
King was obliged to obey the orders of Vienna, pri- 
vately conveyed to him by the Austrian military 
attache in Belgrade (see Das Ende der Obrenovich 
by Vladan Georgevich, former Servian Prime Min- 
ister). The Servian Cabinets hampered and hindered 
by conditions of whose origin they were kept in 
ignorance, were forced to see the country brought to 
verge of ruin in all its relations both interior and 
foreign — (see The Servian People — Vol. II page 
708). 



The Orient Question 

to bring about a break between that coun- 
try and Bulgaria over a mere bagatelle — ■ 
a matter of third-rate concern to Rumania, 
her rather bald object being to distract the 
Rumanian national aspirations from their 
real and important interests in contiguous 
Austro-Hungarian provinces of Transyl- 
vania and Bukovina, which deflect their 
border-lines far into the Rumanian inte- 
rior, enclosing there several millions of 
purely Rumanian inhabitants, which are 
still under the Austro-Hungarian flag. As 
in 1886, Austria's aim was to draw the at- 
tention of Servia eastward to the Bulgarian 
border away from the westerly direction of 
Bosnia and Herzegovina, both Servian 
lands, which were being penetrated by 
Austria, so to-day, Vienna works to fix the 
eyes of Rumania as well as those of Bul- 
garia on a point of the Black Sea coast, 
withdrawing: the national attention from 
the opposite point of the compass where 
within Austrian borders lies Rumania ir- 
redenta. The Rumanian Government act- 

134 



Near Eastern Problem 

ing thus under the guidance of the Aus- 
trian party is not only betraying the true 
national interests light-heartedly, but is al- 
lowing Austria to create between Rumania 
and Bulgaria a standing cause of irritation, 
— a kind of Rumano-Bulgar '' Alsace- 
Lorraine " question in miniature. Noth- 
ing could well be less sagacious on the part 
of those responsible for Rumanian destiny 
than this policy which for a practically 
valueless strip of neighbour's land, sacri- 
fices the future of nearly three and a half 
million Rumanians. 

The reforms in Turkey promised by the 
Berlin treaty, article XXIII, were fore- 
doomed to remain unfulfilled, because not 
only of the conflicting interests of European 
States but, by reason of Turkish inertia, 
unvarying except under coercion. Arme- 
nian affairs best exemplify the situation. 
It had been Russia's intention to create an 
autonomous Armenia under Russian pro- 
tection. England opposed that plan and 

^35 



The Orient Question 

with the so-called Cyprus treaty, herself 
assumed the supervision of the reforms in i 

Asia Minor. When the Armenian mas- 
sacres occurred Russia and England were 
at a deadlock, no other power interfered, 
the Armenians were slaughtered by the 
tens and hundreds of thousands, the world 
looking on, uttering only platonic protests 
which Turk and Sultan disdained to notice. 
That supine attitude of Christendom was 
interpreted by Islam as a sign of western 
helplessness before the Turk and was a 
mighty means of strengthening " Pan-Is- 
lamic '' propaganda. 

Abdul-Hamid inaugurated " Pan-Is- 
lam " with the intention of strengthening 
the rule of the Osmanli in Asia and forg- 
ing a weapon with which to discipline the 
powers, should his Empire be imperilled. 
That wily old Sultan, a scourge to Europe, 
but the most astute and masterful of Turk- 
ish rulers during the past two centuries, 
knew that the days of Ottoman rule in 
Europe were numbered and bent his ener- 

136 



Near Eastern Problem 

gies to the task of consolidating his power 
in Asia. The Armenians were a thorn 
in the side, occupying a territory, which, 
by its situation and the character of its 
surface-relief, possesses a strategic impor- 
tance in relation to advance towards the 
Persian Gulf, India, Suez, or Constanti- 
nople. Killing off the Armenians and re- 
placing them by Osmanlis, that position 
would be re-enforced in its strength against 
Russia and become a stronghold whence 
Ottoman domination could be extended 
across the Moslem lands of Persia, Af- 
ghanistan and into India. 

The pretext for those massacres was 
found in the Armenian political societies 
formed for liberation and the ultimate 
erection of an Armenian State. Societies 
like the Hintchak, the Droshak and others 
were organised on the model of the Mace- 
donian societies and committees. 

In 1885-86 a campaign of propaganda 
in a political sense with the ultimate object 

137 



The Orient Question 

of an insurrection in Turkey was begun by 
an organisation called, the " Central Com- 
mittee for the Autonomy of Macedonia 
and Albania." ^ The Standard of that or- 
ganisation was " Macedonia for the Mace- 
donians "; its object was to obtain the exe- 
cution of article XXIII of the treaty of 
Berlin, separating the nationalities, Serb, 
Bulgar and Greek into homogeneous 
groups, foreseeing their ultimate junction 
with their cultural centres the neighbour- 
ing States of Servia, Montenegro, Bul- 
garia and Greece.^ 

1 The author was one of its first members. 

2 From the first the guiding idea of the author was 
that the organisation might be used as means of free- 
ing the Serb lands still under foreign sway, and so 
unify the Serb nation into one State out of a half 
dozen States and provinces, so as to accomplish what 
for centuries, had been the Servian dream of bringing 
into one political entity and body politic the entire 
Serb nation, all of one race, one language, one cul- 
tural thought and expression throughout the entire 
Serb block of territory. A vital part of that design 
was to secure a Servian outlet to the Sea, without 
which, there can be no Servian development. The 
ultimate aim was a State commanding a permanent 
and solid position among the nations of the world, 

138 



Near Eastern Problem 

The task before the Committee was not 
only to rouse the people to remembrance 
of their rights as people, but to educate 
them in the principle of co-operation for 
the attainment of one supreme purpose — 
their liberation from the Turkish yoke. 
Efforts were made also to counteract sec- 
tional frictions and hostilities which had 
been engendered among them by national 
propaganda carried on by the agents of the 
independent bordering States representing 
the races to which they belonged. The 
next task was to bring before the world 
knowledge of the conditions in Turkey, 
and of the fact that almost the entire popu- 
lation of European Turkey was non-Turk, 

able to progress unimpeded and perfect its civili- 
sation, according the full measure of its national 
genius. Such a result could only be hoped for in har- 
monizing the efforts, not only of the Serbs, but also of 
the Bulgars and the Greeks. It was the object of 
endeavor to inculcate in them all, the important fact 
that a Servia on such lines is a conditio sine qua non 
of a greater and stronger Bulgaria and Greece; and 
that, for the same reason, a strong Bulgaria and a 
strong Greece would offer conditions most propitious 
for a strong and free Servia. 



The Orient Question 

and was In ferment, striving to win free- 
dom. 

To that end the Paris Macedonian Com- 
mittee was founded in 1894,^ the London 
Macedonian Committee was formed in 
1896 and re-organised in 1902.^ The ac- 

1 The author went to Paris for the founding of the 
Macedonian Committee there, in September 1894, and 
to England for the re-organisation of the London 
Committee in 1901-2. Reference: British Parliamen- 
tary Report — Turkish Affairs, 1902-3, p. 177, inclo- 
sure No. 213 — "Reports on Events in Macedonia dur- 
ing May, 1902." . . . The organ of Michailov's Com- 
mittee {^^ Reformi" — Sophia, Bulgaria), reports that 
Evgenyi LazarovzV^ who six or seven years ago 
founded the Paris Macedonian Committee is trying 
to form a similar one in London to prevent English 
foreign policy from being influenced by the Phil-hellen- 
ism of the Byron Society. . . ." 

At the time when every effort had been exerted 
to plant the conception of harmonious cooperation 
among the several national sections in Macedonia it 
was necessary to combat certain political groups in 
foreign lands who, in spite of the irrevocable policy of 
their governments of Turkish maintenance in Europe, 
made it their work to incite unrealisable ambitions 
in some one section, which became untractable, under 
the delusion that such or such a foreign State would 
enforce a demand by that particular national group 
for the whole of European Turkey. 

2 As organs of the Paris and London Committees the 

140 



Near Eastern Problem 

tivltles of the Committee are recorded and 
referred ^ to in the British Parliamentary 
Reports called " Blue-Books " — Report 
of H. B. M. Foreign Secretary to Parlia- 
ment — Turkish Affairs 1903-4, pp. 307, 
308, 309 — ^corres. N° 378 — inclosure 
N° 378 — " Macedonian Committee to the 
Marquess of Lansdowne," September 4, 
1903 — signed : Lazarovich. 

Meanwhile the Servian, Bulgarian and 
Greek Governments opened Schools and 

Eastern European Revieiv and L'Autonomie were 
published fortnightly in 1902 in London by the au- 
thor, who owned and edited both periodicals. They 
were printed in English and French and sent gratis 
to all the Governments, Embassies, Parliaments, 
Newspapers and prominent political personages of 
all the great Capitals of the world. Copies were 
also deposited at the British Museum, and the Univer- 
sities of Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburg and Dublin. 

The London Macedonian Committee had no con- 
nection whatever with the so-called " Balkan Com- 
mittee " composed of several young Englishmen whose 
aims and purposes were entirely concerned with Eng- 
lish politics. They formed their Committee in Lon- 
don in 1903 after the outbreak of the Insurrection. 

1 The Quarterly Re'vieiv, London, October, 1903, 
page 512 and in the press of the time. 

141 



The Orient Question 

supported Churches in their co-national re- 
gions still under Turkish, rule. Apostolo 
Margariti, a patriot Koutzo-Vlach, aroused 
Rumanian interests in the Koutzo-Valachs 
of Macedonia. 

In 1893 the so-called Superior Mace- 
donian-Adrianople Committee was founded 
in Sophia for the purpose of a purely na- 
tional and aggressive propaganda in Mace- 
donia, aided by the Bulgarian Government. 
That organisation was for a time headed 
by Boris Sarafof and General Tzontcheff. 
In Greece the Pan-Hellenic Society worked 
at full steam with government aid. In 
Servia a similar force was at work. In 
1895 the so-called "Interior Organisa- 
tion " was founded by Grueff and Deltcheff, 
its motto was like that of the Central Com- 
mittee's, '' Macedonia for the Macedo- 
nians " but with aim and methods differing 
somewhat from the older one, which had 
first proclaimed that motto, it developed 
vast ramifications of which the proto-type 
was the Italian Carbonari organisation, but 

142 



Near Eastern Problem 

modified so that It should form and pre- 
pare a strong military force for th^ event- 
ual insurrection. 

By 1897 the country was well honey- 
combed with those different committees and 
societies and the commotion occasioned by 
the Armenian massacres in Europe drew 
the general attention vividly to the work 
of the committees. The Paris and Lon- 
don committee was able to powerfully 
illustrate their propaganda by those grue- 
some events. The London committee re- 
ceived from England's Grand Old Man, 
a letter in which Mr. Gladstone accepted 
and proclaimed the slogan of the commit- 
tee, " Macedonia for the Macedonians,*' 
making it ring out to the world. 

The Macedonian agitation as may be 
understood was not calculated to mitigate 
the already chronic state of anarchy In 
Turkey; their aim was the overthrow of 
that regime. This speculation was justified 
by the principle that conquest, though it 
may usurp, cannot abolish the sovereignty 

143 



The Orient Question 

of a nation, which remains in abeyance 
only so long as the militant forces of the 
conqueror are strong enough to prevent 
its re-assertion, that to resist conquest is 
the duty and the right of a nation and of 
the individuals composing that nation ; that 
the action to weaken and destroy the forces 
of the conqueror and to throw off his yoke 
is not only the duty of a nation but is also 
the proof of the honesty of its ethical, cul- 
tural and spiritual morality and of the 
honesty and character of the individuals 
composing the nation. Those principles 
are basic and upon them were founded the 
agitation and movement to overthrow the 
Turk. As a Serb, the author had first in 
view the recall from abeyance of the Ser- 
vian sovereignty and the unification of the 
Serb race, but the plans of his committees 
included the securing of the same results 
for the other Balkan peoples, the Greeks, 
the Bulgars and the Albanians. With 
the accomplishments of those several unifi- 
cations the European part of the Near 

144 



Near Eastern Problem 

Eastern Question and a part of another 
European problem will have been solved. 
It should be said once and for all and 
clearly understood that the unhampered 
possession of the entire Balkan Peninsula 
by the Balkan peoples solely and their 
control of those lands, free from outside 
Interference, presents conditions necessary 
not only to the comfort and progress of 
those peoples, but to the peace of Europe, 
so far as regards all issues affected by that 
region of the world. 

By 1896-7 the agitation had progressed 
and the Ethnike, the Greek Pan-Hellenic 
society exercised strong pressure on the 
Greek Government, believing that any 
move of Greece and hostilities with Tur- 
key would bring about a general rising of 
all the Macedonian organisations and ac- 
tion by Servia, Bulgaria and Montenegro. 
The Insurrection in Creta gave Greece the 
desired occasion. Turkey declared war. 
Servia and Bulgaria, under Irresistible pres- 
sure of the Powers, especially Austria and 

145 



The Orient Question 

Russia, abstained from intervening. The 
Macedonian Central and Interior Organi- 
sations were not prepared for an active 
campaign and realised that to enter the 
field with insufficient resources would be 
certain destruction. The Bulgarian and 
the Servian organisations made some little 
flutter but were restrained by their Gov- 
ernments. Greece, fighting alone, was out- 
numbered by the enemy and the Sultan's 
forces gained the last victorious campaign 
ever won by Turkish troops In Europe. 
Creta received from the Powers a sepa- 
rate status under a European Governor- 
General, the first being Prince George of 
Greece. 

In Macedonia the discovery of a de- 
posit of arms belonging to the committees, 
and increased agitation among the popula- 
tion, brought about repression In the usual 
Turkish forms. Arms were distributed to 
the Moslems and Albanians who were 
given a free hand as to methods to stamp 
out every move made by the committees. 

146 



Near Eastern Problem 

Austria and Russia, who, after the Rus- 
so-Turkish war had under Bismark's guid- 
ance come to an understanding, concluded 
in 1897 an arrangement for enforcing 
Macedonian reforms and in 1902, Turkey 
finally promulgated a project of her own 
making, which left the vital abuses out of 
account and failed to abate the agitation. 
A rising was first planned for the autumn 
of 1902, for which most of the organisa- 
tions came together to discuss a scheme of 
concerted action.^ 

However, in view of the strong Euro- 
pean feeling that the Sultan should be al- 
lowed opportunity to execute his promises 
of reform, it was decided to postpone any 
armed operations until the following year 
— giving further time for getting arms 
and ammunition into the country. It was 
expected that by 1903 Servia, Montenegro, 
Greece and Bulgaria would be ready to 

1 In that connection a series of meetings, attended by 
Sarafof and other leaders, who came especially to 
England for that purpose, took place at the author's 
country-house in England in June, 1902. 



The Orient Question 

bring armed force into co-operation with 
the " Comitadjis." ^ 

Russia and Austria found the Turkish 
reforms inadequate and presented a memo- 
randum making specific demands and in 
the month of February, 1903, called upon 
the Bulgarian and Servian Governments 
to disperse the organisations formed with- 
in their territories. In obedience to that 
request it was supposed that the Supreme 
Macedonian-Adrianople Organisation was 
dissolved. The Central Committees and 
the Interior Organisation were beyond the 
reach of the mandatory Powers and the 
spring of 1903 saw a period of violences 
inaugurated with the blowing up of the 
Ottoman Bank Building at Salonika. 

The Turkish Government redoubled its 
measures of repression, mobilised several 
Army Corps and called out reserves. But 
the extreme methods employed by the Ot- 
toman troops seemed only to further stif- 

1 Name given by the Turks to all adherents to the 
Macedonian revolt. 

148 



Near Eastern Problem 

fen resistance and crystallize the courage 
of numbers of the population who previ- 
ously had been wavering and who now 
swelled the ranks of the comitadjis. 

The insurrection, which broke out in 
August, on the day of St. Ilya, was a large 
and well supported movement, in which 
the insurgents won some temporary suc- 
cess. By the middle of October the Turk- 
ish troops got the upper hand; the 
expected intervention of Servia, Bulgaria 
and Montenegro did not materialize; the 
change of ruler in Servia had some In- 
fluence in that matter, as King Peter and 
his Government were occupied with the 
interior affairs of the country, and the pres- 
sure exercised by the great Powers im- 
posed restraint. The different organisa- 
tions attempted to negotiate with the 
Turkish Government to obtain some ac- 
ceptance of their demands. ^ 

1 The author as delegate of the Central organisa- 
tion, laid certain proposals embodied in a memoran- 
dum before the chancelleries of Europe, and negotiated 
with the Turkish authorities on a basis of new provin- 

149 



The Orient Question 

A convention called the " Murzsteg Pro- 
gramme " and to which Turkey assented 
in principle was elaborated between Aus- 
tria and Russia for the enforcement of re- 
forms and all other negotiations fell 
through. 

The " Murtzsteg " programme de- 
manded that the Turkish Inspector-Gen- 
eral of Western European Turkey should 
be assisted by two civil agents, one repre- 
senting Austria and one Russia for the 

cial delimitations, according to nationality. The 
provinces or vilayets to be constituted by the sug- 
gested new boundaries were to receive in accordance 
with article XXIII of the treaty of Berlin a measure 
of self-government. The proposals also included 
agrarian reforms, regulation of the rental due the 
Moslem-feudal landlord from the Christian tenant and 
its collection by a local Christian board, the regula- 
tion of the taxes and their method of levying. As 
those financial and fiscal reforms would have given a 
higher revenue although lessening the burden of the 
tax-payer, and that surplus would have been sufficient 
to guarantee the service of a loan of about fifty mil- 
lion dollars, the author offered to the Turkish Gov- 
ernment a loan of twenty-five million dollars the un- 
derwriting of which he obtained in London. See 
Appendix B-2. 

150 




I M J/ / A JV OCJJAJV 



Map of the Near East 



Near Eastern Problem 

supervision of the reforms and that the 
Military Police or Gendarmerie should be 
reorganised under the command of Euro- 
pean Officers from several nations. De 
Georgis, an Italian General, was nominated 
for the Chief-command. Some months later 
at the suggestion of Lord Lansdowne/ 
the British Foreign secretary, these civil 
agents were to be assisted by a financial 
commission composed of delegates of Eng- 
land, France, Germany and Italy. Co- 
erced by a fleet-demonstration the Sublime 
Porte yielded, but the passive resistance of 
the Turkish authorities, a kind of *' sabot- 
age," resulted in the absolute failure of the 
reform scheme. That scheme had taken 

1 Prior to Lord Lansdowne's suggestion to the Pow- 
ers, the author, through the good offices of Sir Henry 
Drummond Wolff — (Privy Councillor, former High 
Commissioner for East Rumelia, Special Commissioner 
to Turkey, Minister to Persia, Ambassador to Spain, 
etc.) — had submitted to the British Foreign Office 
memoranda representing that any measure for the 
effective betterment of conditions for the Macedonian 
populations must be based on fiscal and agrarian re- 
forms, especially concerning the fixing and collecting 
of taxes and rentals. 



The Orient Question 

as basis, the demands formulated by the 
Central Macedonian Committee, but the 
foreign agents were without sufficient 
power of enforcement; as it was not sup- 
ported by the Ottoman authorities and was 
looked upon askance and with mistrust by 
the Christian population, absolute failure 
was inevitable. After having been able 
to prevent an attempted rising that had 
been financed by private British and Aus- 
trian sources in 1904,^ and which would 
not have furthered Macedonian or Balkan 
interests, the Central Macedonian Com- 
mittee adopted a waiting attitude. 

The interior organisation had spent its 
forces and split itself into different sec- 

1 The author retired at that period from active par- 
ticipation in the direction of that organisation with 
which he had been identified since 1886, in order to 
devote himself entirely to a work involving Servian 
development southward, including the securing of an 
outlet on the ^gean Sea, and the construction across 
Servia and old Servia through the rivers Morava 
and Vardar of a navigable waterway called the 
Danube--^gean Canal. See Appendix — Danube — ■ 
-^gean Canal. 

152 



Near Eastern Problem 

tlons, some re-enforcing the outside na- 
tional propaganda, others remained under 
the leadership of several chiefs, among 
whom was Sandanski. The national prop- 
agandas directed from the neighboring 
lands, Servia, Bulgaria and Greece often 
forgot their common enemy the Turk, and 
fought among themselves, until by de- 
grees, they began to perceive that apart 
from the natural causes arousing their 
jealous national passions, were hands from 
the invisible that shoved them forward into 
the cock-pit and clapped them on to the 
•fray. Slowly, but in time, they came to 
realise that their hope lay in united action. 

The conditions in European Turkey 
went from bad to worse. In Asia and in 
the Yemen (Arabia), since 1892, the Arab 
tribes had been in revolt, led by the Iman 
of Sana, who received secret support from 
Great Britain and challenged the right of 
the Ottoman Sultans to the Khalifat. It 
was part of Lord Curzon's plan in split- 

153 



The Orient Question 

ting Islam, to restore Mecca and the " Ba- 
riak-al-Sherif " to an Arabian Khalifa — 
under British protection. Those revolts 
in the Yemen were extremely costly to Tur- 
key, necessitating expensive military ex- 
peditions and were ruinous to the discipline 
of her troops. 

The utter decay of the Ottoman Em- 
pire was imminent, although endowed with 
an army, which, instructed and re-organised 
by a Germany military mission, was be- 
lieved to be still of great military value; 
it had received a new glamour of efficiency 
from the easy victory of the Greek cam- 
paign and was considered to have become 
a valuable appendix of the German politi- 
cal position in Europe, Turkey, being 
looked upon as the fourth, though silent 
partner in the Triple Alliance. 

The policy inaugurated by King Ed- 
ward, his entente with France under Mr. 
Delcasse, which provoked Germany's re- 
tort, resulting in the Algesiras Conference 



Near Eastern Problem 

over the Morocco Incident, and the Russo- 
Japanese war, which strained to a certain 
extent the new Anglo-French combina- 
tion, led to an attempt to break up the 
Triple Alliance. 

The Austro-Russian entente had already 
come to an end and was replaced by the so- 
called Reval programme with the ostensible 
object of reforms in which England was 
the binding member between the different 
powers with whom she had concluded ar- 
rangements, France, Austria and Russia. 

Germany, which, in that new move, right- 
fully saw an attempt to isolate her and 
make a ring around her, advised Sultan 
Abdul Hamid to, himself, proclaim reforms 
on a radical scale in Turkey; which he 
did. A proclamation of a constitution, 
after the experiment of 1876, would not 
have been taken seriously by Europe. So, 
after approved methods a revolution was 
ordered by the Sultan; and, for that pur- 
pose, the Paris organisation of the Young 
Turks and the faithful Albanians whom 

^5S 



The Orient Question 

Abdul Hamld trusted implicitly, and who 
formed his body-guard at his palace in 
Constantinople, were entrusted with that 
task. The Young Turk Committee of 
Union and Progress were established at 
Salonika, and two officers charged to head 
the revolution. On July 22nd, Niazi Bey 
raised the standard of revolt in a small 
Macedonian Garrison town; on July 23rd, 
Major Enver Bey issued a proclamation re- 
storing the Constitution; and on July 24th, 
the Sultan, under the menace of the whole 
army marching on Constantinople, issued 
an irrade re-establishing the Constitution 
of 1876. With the exception of some as- 
sassinations, matters of private hatred, the 
" revolution " went off like clock-work. 
Promises had been made to various Mace- 
donian organisations which entered into 
the game, believing that some good might 
come out of it, one way or another. The 
reasons for the adherence of the Macedo- 
nian Committees and organisations were: 
primarily, the prospects of the withdrawal 

156 



Near Eastern Problem 

of the European agents and the check to 
Austrian and Russian interference; espe- 
cially Austrian, which, since the replacing 
of the Austro-Russian Murzsteg entente by 
the new Reval Anglo-French-Russian-Aus- 
trian programme, had indicated that Aus- 
tria considered the field clear for her ad- 
vance to Salonika — and, secondarily, the 
belief of those who were working for 
Macedonian liberation that a withdrawal 
of the European Concert from the Bal- 
kans would allow the Balkan States to act 
more freely and independently. 

Europe accepted with as good grace as 
possible the Sultan's volte-face and the proc- 
lamation of a constitution, ushered in with 
the approved expression of the will of the 
Ottoman people. All foreign reform 
schemes being thus forestalled, the agents 
were withdrawn and Europe's intervention 
was at an end. Austria and Bulgaria, 
who would have the most profited by the 
English plan, took compensation for its 
failure; Austria annexed Bosnia and Her- 

157 



The Orient Question 

zegovlna outright and Bulgaria proclaimed 
full independence and changed her status 
to that of a Kingdom. Austria-Hungary 
at the same time, by submitting Servia to 
a series of galling provocations and excit- 
ing the resentment already caused by the 
annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 
(Serb-lands), attempted to drive the Serbs 
onto the rocks of armed conflict, the aim 
being to further complete the Austro-Hun- 
garian programme by the conquest of Ser- 
via and the extension of Hapsburg sway 
over all Serb-lands down to Salonika. 

There existed in conjunction with the 
plans, an Anglo-Franco-Austrian project 
which would have become effective in case 
of a change of ruler in Austria, as was ex- 
pected to take place in December, 1908, 
paying Austria for adherence to an anti- 
German combination with a free hand in all 
of Western European Turkey, including Al- 
bania and Salonika and eastward up to the 
Struma River. Germany's intervention on 
behalf of Austria's annexation of Bosnia 

158 



Near Eastern Problem 

and Herzegovina, and Francis Joseph's 
non-abdication, forced general acceptance 
of the accomplished facts in Turkey. 

Once its creatures were installed at Con- 
stantinople, the Committee of Progress and 
Union got out of hand. In Macedonia, 
as soon as the outward signs of European 
intervention were removed with the with- 
drawal of the foreign agents, the promises 
made by the Young Turks and Abdul 
Hamid to the various Macedonian organ- 
isations were further from realisation than 
ever, and the old strife and agitation re- 
began. The Albanians, especially, who, on 
one side, cajoled by Italy, on the other, 
helped by Austria, had imagined that the 
new regime in fulfilment of alluring prom- 
ises would reward them with new and ex- 
traordinary privileges, made known their 
disappointment by outbursts of violence and 
revolt. The Young Turk policy of Otto- 
manisation that is, Turkizisation, met with 
resistance from all non-Moslem popula- 

159 



The Orient Question 

tions. In Asia Minor the Kourds, impa- 
tient at delay in the fulfilment of their 
expectations, accused the Young Turks of 
acts that were un-orthodox, revolted, and 
finally obtained satisfaction by the mas- 
sacres of Van, Mush and Adana. In the 
Yemen, a new Mahdi rose, and the whole 
Turkish Empire seethed with disorder. In 
Constantinople, divergencies of views 
brought about a crisis which ended in the 
active intervention of the Army. By a 
coup d'etat the Sultan was deposed, and 
his brother, Mahomed, proclaimed in his 
place. Abdul Hamid was transferred to 
Salonika, which was the supreme seat of 
the Committee of Progress and Union. 

The methods of procedure in the dis- 
arming of the Christian populations were 
accompanied with extreme violences, tor- 
ture and murder, but, with the exception of 
the London Times, the foreign press, under 
some illusion, it is supposed, as to their real 
purpose, reported those outrages but scan- 
tily. The Albanian discontent resulted in 

1 60 



Near Eastern Problem 

an uprising of the Malisory or Hill tribes, 
the Gheghas, north of the Shkumbi River, 
which was fought with varying luck on both 
sides. 

The Balkan States in the meantime, un- 
der the constant menace of Austria, began 
to put their armed forces into trim and at 
the end of 19 1 1, negotiations began to fore- 
cast their co-ordinate action against Tur- 
key. In 19 1 2, Austria came again forward 
with a project of reforms, expecting to be 
nominated as mandatary of Europe for en- 
forcing article XXIII of the Berlin treaty. 
That action of Austria was not only a 
menace against the prospect of final liberty 
for the inhabitants of European Turkey, 
making imminent for them the same fate 
which had befallen Bosnia and Herzego- 
vina, but it left no room for doubt as to 
the peril therein implied to the very exist- 
ence of the Balkan States themselves. 
With full knowledge of the hardships in- 
volved in a winter-campaign, made vivid 

161 



The Orient Question 

by the remembrance of the appalling suf- 
ferings of the Russian soldiers amid the 
snow and ice of the Shipka Pass in 1878, 
the Allies, with an old and gangrenous ad- 
versary before them, and a more inexor- 
able and formidable enemy in the rear, al- 
ready on the move toward their final con- 
quest, realised the necessity of going to 
war without delay. 

They hastened the conclusion of their 
mutual arrangements and called upon Tur- 
key for the execution of article XXIII of 
the Berlin treaty, knowing full well that 
Turkey would refuse to accede to their 
demand. The situation of friction on the 
Montenegrin border allowed the King of 
Montenegro, by a bold and swift action, 
to forestall the Powers and prevent them 
from executing the Hapsburg design of 
Austria's receiving, according to her old 
methods, a mandate of armed intervention 
and pacification. Montenegro, on October 
8th,, declared war on Turkey. On October 
17th, the Sublime Porte, in answer to the 

162 



Near Eastern Problem 

Ultimatum of Servia and Bulgaria, de- 
manding the execution of the treaty of Ber- 
lin, declared war on Servia and Bulgaria. 
Greece followed on October i8th. 

Before Austria, and her supporters 
among the other Powers, who had planned 
the partition of Turkey to their own profit, 
could find a way to intervene, the Allied 
armies, after kneeling to take Holy Com- 
munion as those ready for death, had 
swiftly crossed the Turkish borders. The 
Sultan's troops were defeated in one battle 
after another. The Servians routed and 
destroyed the Turkish Army at Kou- 
manovo, Prilep and Monastir; the Bul- 
garians shattered the Ottoman Army at 
Kirikilisi and Lule Burgas; the Greeks de- 
feated the Turks in several engagements 
and took Salonika. Three weeks after 
the declaration of war, the whole Turkish 
forces were practically annihilated, and the 
territory held by the remnants of the army 
of those who had, up to then, been the 
usurpers and conquerors of the Balkan peo- 

163 



The Orient Question 

pies, were restricted to a line of fortifica- 
tions outside of the walls of Constantinople 
and the besieged garrisons of Adrianople, 
Scutari and Yanina. Everywhere the in- 
habitants hailed the Victors as brothers. 
Arming themselves with the weapons cap- 
tured from the Turks they formed them- 
selves into auxiliary aids of the troops of 
the Allies. As the triumphant Serbs en- 
tered Skoplya, after the three days' bat- 
tle of Koumanovo, the people along the 
streets held up their babies, and the hands 
of little children waving in welcome bless- 
ing were more expressive than words or 
cries, of the meaning of liberation and of 
the unutterable joy of the inhabitants. 
The old Churches, for the first time in five- 
hundred years, r^ng with Te-Deums of 
gratitude and praise. 

That unprecedented and glorious cam- 
paign of barely three weeks, had called out 
of past abeyance the sovereignty of the 
nations, Serb, Bulgar and Greek, which had 
been kept In thrall for centuries. The 

164 



Near Eastern Problem 

Turk, as a State In Europe, has ceased to 
exist. Whatever be the outcome of the 
peace-negotiations, the Turkish phase of 
the Near Eastern Question in Europe is 
forever closed. But among the effects left 
over from the Turkish conquest In Europe, 
are the situations Involving the completion 
and respective unifications of the Servian 
and Rumanian nations, Intimately connected 
with the Austrian problem. These two 
States can only be satisfied with the calling 
from abeyance of the sovereignty of that 
part of each of their nations upon which 
Austria has imposed Hapsburg conquest 
and rule. 

In the present war Bulgaria alone, of 
all the Allied States, has extended her bor- 
ders entirely over the lands Inhabited by 
her co-nationals and so consummates the 
building of her nation. Her natural bor- 
ders Include Constantinople and Gallipoll^ 
the European shores of the Bosporus and 
the Dardanelles. Henceforth, her task Is 

165 



The Orient Question 

to hold what she has won. Any eventual 
Bulgarian expansion lies eastward of the 
Marmora in Asia. 

Greece has extended her borders north- 
ward, enclosing the more compactly Greek- 
inhabited districts and most of the Islands 
of the ^gean Sea, but her important trend 
of development is eastward and southward, 
and her State, as representing the Greek 
nation, will only be complete with the pos- 
session of all the Islands and that part of 
Asia Minor and its coasts inhabited by 
Greeks since antiquity. 

Montenegro and Servia have been able 
to rescue from the Turkish yoke the main 
bulk of their old lands inhabited by Serbs, 
but the Serb nation Is not yet rounded out 
In its making, as the sovereignty of sev- 
eral of the Serb provinces still lies In abey- 
ance to a foreign domination. 

Bulgaria has no vital Interest In Salonika, 
where her presence would be an embarrass- 
ment and a danger to both Greek and Ser- 

i66 



Near Eastern Problem 

vian defence. She has, within her own 
natural borders, on the JEge^Ln Sea, abun- 
dance of water-fronts and harbours. 

Greece, in Salonika will find her best in- 
terests, both national and commercial, in- 
timately interwoven with those of Servia. 
The gaining by Servia of a port at, or near, 
Salonika, is a matter of supreme impor- 
tance to the country, both as regards na- 
tional defence and economical develop- 
ment. With the completion of the Dan- 
ube-iEgean Canal and the possession of 
the hinter-land, including the great longi- 
tudinal valley from the Danube to the 
^gean Sea it lies alone with Servia to 
make of Salonika a port of first commer- 
cial rank, through which the rich com- 
merce of central Europe would pass from 
the Danube through Servia by a water- 
level road, connecting Suez with the North- 
ern Seas in a line straight as the crow flies, 
shortening that distance by 1500 miles. ^ 
These geographical and commercial con- 

^ See appendix. 

167 



The Orient Question 

sideratlons throw the future development 
of this magnificent harbour into the hands 
of Servia, and the more considerable the 
power of the Serb is at Salonika, the 
greater the value of that position to Greek 
advance in Asia Minor. On the other 
hand, Servia has every interest to see the 
Greek coasts of Asia Minor under the 
Greek flag. 

Scutari, (Skodra or Skadar), and its 
harbour of San Giovanni di Medua are the 
natural appurtenances of Montenegro. 
The position of Scutari, as a fortress at the 
southeastern end of lake Scutari command- 
ing the Moratcha valley, forms the only 
possible approach for the penetration of 
the mountain fastnesses of Montenegro, 
For that reason Scutari is a vital question 
of national defence and security for Monte- 
negro; especially, in view of the dark fu- 
ture of Albania as at present foreshadowed 
in the proposals of the powers. 

There has never existed an organised 
i68 



Near Eastern Problem 

State of Albania. The nearest approach 
to a united formulation, was during the 
single lifetime of Skander-beg, a Serb, who 
led the largest part of the clans of that dis- 
trict of the old Serb State, In a series of 
attempts to drive out the Turk. The na- 
tive courage and other fine characteris- 
tics of these fierce mountain tribes, have 
been turned into evil courses by systematic 
methods which the Turk always employed 
in his administration. During the entire 
period of Ottoman rule, the districts of 
Albania were In a state of constant anarchy, 
and it was the Sultan's policy to make of 
the Albanians a robber-race, encouraging 
them in deeds of violence and bloodshed 
against their neighbours, thus using them 
as an irregular auxiliary force of oppres- 
sion and extirpation against the Serbs and 
Greeks. They were allowed a free hand 
to commit against the Christians of Euro- 
pean Turkey any act of lust, rapine or 
bloodshed and were confirmed in the 
possession of their spoils. 

169 



The Orient Question 

The sinister interference of Europe to- 
day in Albania, as it has been framed, is 
only a continuance of the use of these 
ignorant Hill-tribes to perpetuate disorder, 
which could only be aimed at the ultimate 
bestowal of the country upon some one of 
the big powers of Europe — an act of 
short-sightedness amounting to criminality, 
as it would, gratuitously create, a new Bal- 
kan problem. The erection and develop- 
ment of an autonomous Albanian State is 
entirely legitimate but is only possible 
without endangering the independence of 
the Albanians and of the other Balkan 
States, if the new Albania be the sole work 
of the Balkan States, themselves, and be- 
come a member of the Balkan league, 
whose prime interest it is that the Alban- 
ians should form a strong and organised 
people, free and independent of all foreign 
interference. 

There can be no independence of Al- 
bania except that guaranteed by the Balkan 
States. 

170 



Near Eastern Problem 

Interference by the outside powers or 
any one of them in that part of the Bal- 
kan Peninsula would mean, not only the 
creation of a hot-bed of foreign intrigue 
and continual peril to the independence of 
the other Balkan States, but would also en- 
tail indefinite delay of Albanian develop- 
ment, as no foreign State is coming there 
with the honest intention of creating an 
independent Albania. On the contrary, 
their aim is to cripple the whole peninsula, 
which would be, either wrecked anew, 
bringing endless war, or, the Balkan 
States would be obliged in self-defence — 
perhaps after much further bloodshed 
and misery, to forcibly occupy the Alba- 
nian Hills and administrate the people 
in the common interests of the Balkan 
nations. 

A peculiarity of conditions in the pres- 
ent Balkan alliance is, that each and all 
of the Allied States has a particular inter- 
est in favouring the normal and legitimate 

171 



The Orient Question 

development of each and all of the other 
members of the League. 

Occupation of the Servian plateau by 
Austria-Hungary or loss of Servian and 
Montenegrin independence, would make 
Bulgaria, as well as Greece, the prey and 
Vassals of the Hapsburgs; and the other 
Balkan States are bound to support Servia 
and Montenegro in their relation to that 
new problem which is beginning to con- 
front Europe — the problem of the ag- 
glomeration, called Austria-Hungary. 

D. INTERNATIONAL ASPECTS OF THE 
NEAR EASTERN PROBLEM. 

Prior to the coming of the Turk, the 
Orient Problem lay in the contest between 
Bysanz and Rome, the struggle for world- 
supremacy of the Papacy, in the attempts 
of the Roman Church to bend the Eastern 
Church into recognition of the supremacy 
of the See of Rome. The crusades 
against Islam were one aspect of that 
phase. The conquest by the crusaders of 

172 



Near Eastern Problem 

Constantinople and the erection of the 
Latin Empire and the Prankish States in 
Greece and the Islands; the wars of Naples, 
Venice and Hungary against the Servian 
State, which continued when the Ottoman 
Turks attacked, first, Bysanz, and then, the 
Servian State, were all actions In that war 
against the Eastern Church, waged by the 
Popes In assertion of the old theory of 
Rome as the centre and source of supreme 
authority — Universal Rule from Rome. ^ 

1 That conflict has survived to the present time. In 
the history of the Serbs under Hapsburg yoke, and 
the literature and other means of propaganda put 
forth to plead justification of Austria's policy toward 
the Balkan States, one of the arguments always ad- 
vanced is that Austria acts for the Roman Catholic 
Faith as against the " night " of the Eastern Church. 
This attitude, sowing discord between Christians, is 
strongly condemned by liberal and progressive 
Roman Catholic Servians, whose standard is that of 
the enlightened Roman Bishop Strossmayer: political 
brother-hood a sacred principle among co-nationals, to 
be kept separate from the issues of Church fealties. 

It should be said in foreign lands where the char- 
acter of the Eastern Church is very imperfectly under- 
stood, that nowhere in all Christendom are the ideals 
of Christ more sublimely expressed or brought more 



The Orient Question 

The question of the Balkans to-day, of 
the fate of Asiatic Turkey, of Egypt and 
of Persia, all component parts of the Near 
Eastern Question, beyond their local as- 
pect, possess other and more far-reaching 
importance, from the fact that the lands 
they affect, being washed by the waters 
of the Eastern Mediterranean, Suez, the 
Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and traversed 
by the great land-highways between the 
Industrial centres of the West and the vast 
unconquered markets of the Far Orient, 
are of acute International Interest, and en- 
ter vitally Into the considerations and poli- 
cies of all Empire-building nations. 

In that prodigious effort of Empire- 

intlmately into daily life or more definitely embedded 
in local social institutions and the relations between 
man and man based on " brother-hood " than in the 
Eastern Church. Her formulas of Communion and 
invocation speak from the heart of nature — yet di- 
vinely wise, to nature's God, suggestive of conceptions 
peculiarly Arian, indicative of profound causes, rooted 
perhaps in far antiquity, which moved the great 
white races of the earth to be the first to recognise 
Him as their own. 

174 



Near Eastern Problem 

building, the great nations of Europe set 
their borders far beyond their territorial 
limits, marking out aims of future con- 
quests in the realms of political influence 
and commercial development. 

During a century the dominant factors 
in the expansion into Asia, have been Rus- 
sia and England ; the other Powers, France, 
Germany and Italy, are secondary and mod- 
ifying factors. The acuteness of rivalry 
in the convergency of all those interests, 
dates from the piercing of the Suez Canal 
which opened the shortest sea-route from 
Europe to Asia. 

Russia, separated into numerous repub- 
lics, was in the Middle Ages, the object of 
the aggression of her neighbours from the 
northwest, from the west, the south, the 
southeast and the east. Of these, the east- 
ern, western and northwestern aggressions 
were the most successful; Poland, Sweden 
and the Tartars gained foot-holds in Rus- 
sia and, for a short period, the Russian 

175 



The Orient Question 

sovereignty was practically in abeyance. 
Reaction against those aggressions and 
conquests brought the recall from abeyance 
of Russian sovereignty and the forming of 
one united Russian State out of the many 
small republics and principalities. In 
that creative act of " gathering together 
of the Russian Earth " — as Russians say, 
— Moscow was Tzar, and one by one, add- 
ing State unto State bound " All the Rus- 
sias " into one mighty whole. The free- 
ing from Tartar rule and the following up 
of the receding Mongol into Asia, brought 
Russia to the boundaries of the Chinese 
Empire. 

In the Eighteenth Century, Russia ac- 
complished moves of expansion in three 
directions: in the northwest, reaching the 
Baltic, destroying the power of Sweden, 
Peter the Great " hacked open his window 
to the west; " — in the west, " Little " and 
White " Russia were regained from Po- 
land, and finally, with participation in the 
partition of Poland, making her borders 

176 



Near Eastern Problem 

contiguous with those of Germany and 
Austria-Hungary, Russia reached the limits 
of her expansion westward. In the south, 
she extended her sway by conquest from 
Turkey, to the shores of the Black Sea 
and came to the Caspian. Since the be- 
ginning of the Ninteenth Century Russia's 
lines of advance have borne: southwest- 
ward, in the direction of the Eastern Medi- 
terranean and Suez, designated by some 
writers as her advance along her " right 
flank." In the East, her advance has been 
to and along the coast of the Pacific, des- 
ignated as the " left flank," and the central 
line of advance in Mid-Asia, has lain south- 
ward in the direction of the Indian Ocean 
by way of Persia and the Persian Gulf. 

Russia is, at the same time, European 
and Asian. Her homogeneity is territo- 
rial and, more or less racial, and she pos- 
sesses the strategic interior lines relative to 
Europe and Asia. The nations touching 
Russia's borders are geographically, ra- 
cially and politically segregated from each 

177 



The Orient Question 

other. For this reason a defeat of Rus- 
sia, as history has shown, results in in- 
crease of Russian strength and expansion. 

England following in the wake of the 
Portuguese, Spaniards, Dutch and French 
in their colonial expansion, came to India. 
The wars of the seventeenth and especially 
of the eighteenth century gave to England 
the possession of India. India has, in a 
sense, created the British Empire. With- 
out India, England might be only the 
United Kingdom with some colonies in 
the Americas. But India and the protec- 
tion of India, forced England to acquire 
Malta, Cyprus and Egypt; to seek the 
hegemony of the Eastern Mediterranean 
and its coasts, Suez and the Red Sea ; to ac- 
quire the Cape of Good Hope, the islands 
on the West coast of Africa, the islands 
and coastline on the East coast of Africa; 
to acquire possessions in the East Indian 
Archipelago, Burma, Singapore, Hong- 
kong, — to extend her dominion and colo- 

178 



Near Eastern Problem 

nise Australia and New Zealand. With- 
out India, England would not have gone 
into the Southern Pacific, where, to-day, she 
watches with keen eyes the developments 
around and at the Panama Canal. 

The Indian Ocean has become a British 
lake. The entrances to it from all its sides 
are in British hands. 

During the eighteenth century Great 
Britain and France fought together for 
empire on all the seas of the world and 
In all its land-battles, either under their 
own flags, or by taking a hand in opposed 
camps in all other wars. France fought 
England in the American struggle for in- 
dependence, and England fought France 
in the French Revolution and the Napo- 
leonic wars. France as an empire went 
under, England triumphed; her trophies 
were the British Empire and the mastery 
of the weaves. 

Those conquests displaced the gravity 
of the British Empire and removed Its 

179 



The Orient Question 

centre from the British Isles to India, 
whose protection must thenceforth form 
the first aim of British poHcy. 

Napoleon's Egyptian campaign, in 1798, 
and his ephemeral alliance with Russia for 
the conquest of India, pointed out new 
roads by which India could be attained. 
From that expedition and the treaty of 
Tilsit dates the era of which the modern 
political situation is the result. 

India is a continental possession with 
long land-frontiers. The base of the de- 
fences of that frontier are not in India 
but In England, whence troops and all ma- 
terial of resistance must come. As Lord 
Beaconsfield said: "The keyes of India 
lie not at Herat or Kandahar but at West- 
minster." The distance between Eng- 
land and India is considerable; the road 
Is by sea, the shortest one lies by way of 
the Mediterranean, Suez and the Red Sea. 
So Malta, Egypt and Aden defend that 
road. Every change In the possession of 
the strategic positions throughout the Near 

180 



Near Eastern Problem 

East is a menace to India. So, the status 
quo of the Turkish Empire was long con- 
sidered as a defence; so, the maintenance 
of Persia and Afghanistan in their status 
of being under English influence is neces- 
sary for the defence of India. 

Russian expansion in the direction of the 
Bosporus, of Persia, in Central Asia, and 
along the shores of the Pacific in the Far 
East meant to England a menace to In- 
dia. To meet Russian advance England 
expanded the borders of India on the east, 
west and north. In search of natural fron- 
tiers of snowy mountain ranges or water- 
less deserts, Interposing barriers to inva- 
sion. She intervened In Persia and in 
Afghanistan which became her exclusive 
domain in Influence, while Persia has been 
the region of a constant war of Influence 
between her and Russia; Russia, exercis- 
ing pressure on the northern land-borders, 
England, In the south along the coast, 
through the extension of her Indian bor- 

i8i 



The Orient Question 

ders over Belutchistan. In Turkey, Rus- 
sian diplomacy was opposed by Brit- 
ish. 

The antagonism between England and 
Russia, the two mightiest realms In the 
modern age, has, during the past hundred 
years, dominated the world-situation in all 
Its essential bearings. The groupings of 
the Powers as they present themselves to- 
day are either the direct results of, or have 
been shaped under the Influence of that con- 
test. 

The events of the International affairs 
and politics from the beginning of the 
nineteenth century to the present time, 
have been largely moulded by the efforts 
of Russia towards expansion In either of 
the three lines of her advance and by the ef- 
forts of England to restrain, to repulse and 
destroy Russia, using every available means 
of diplomacy of war — supporting the mili- 
tant forces of other nations whose Inter- 
ests came Into clash with those of Russia 
— or by aiding the Interior movements of 

182 



Near Eastern Problem 

discontent aimed at the inner destruction 
of the Russian State. 

On the principle of Turkish territorial 
integrity, England, as counterpoise to Rus- 
sian influence, took an active hand in the 
affairs of the settlement of the Greek wars 
of independence. When, by the treaty of 
Adrianople in 1829, closing the Russo- 
Turklsh war, Russia stipulated along with 
confirmation of her rights to pass the 
Straits, practical independence under Turk- 
ish suzerainty of Moldavia, Valachia, 
Servia and Greece, — England, France and 
Austria, as a check to Russia, went a step 
further and established the complete inde- 
pendence of Greece. England also took 
the lead in holding up the Sultan's au- 
thority against Mehemet Ali, of Egypt, 
taking out of the hands of Russia the sole 
protection of the Sultan which had been 
accorded her by the treaty of Unkiar Skel- 
lessi (1833), and by the protocols of Lon- 
don, 1840 and 1 841, closing the incident 
of Mehemet Ali. England not only 

183 



The Orient Question 

baffled French diplomacy, but worsted Rus- 
sia, forbidding warships the passage of the 
Dardanelles and Bosporus, so shutting up 
the Russian fleet in the Black Sea. These 
protocols, closing the doors of the Mediter- 
ranean to Russia who was superseded, in 
her special advantages of aiding Turkey, 
by the Powers of Europe, — formed the 
nucleus of the since famous concert of Eu- 
rope. 

The defeat and utter destruction of the 
Turkish fleet at Sinope three weeks after 
the declaration of war by Turkey against 
Russia in 1853, proving the strength of 
the Russian fleet in the Black Sea, fore- 
shadowed ultimate complete Turkish de- 
struction and the opening of the Straits to 
a free entrance of the Russian fleet from 
the Black Sea into the Mediterranean. 
England and France as allies, intervened in 
favour of Turkey and fought the Crimean 
war, Austria, meanwhile, as an anti-Rus- 
sian move, occupying Rumania. Russia, 
defeated in that European conflict, found 

184 



Near Eastern Problem 

herself, by the treaty of Paris, deprived 
both of the right to possess a naval force 
in the Black Sea and of the right, recog- 
nised to her by the treaty of Kutchuk 
Kainardji (1774) , to protect the Orthodox 
Christians in Turkey. At that time the 
Western Powers adopted Turkey into 
concert of Europe. For these losses the 
fortunes of Russia compensated her in the 
Far East, where, being forced to defend 
the Siberian coast against the military ac- 
tions of the Franco-English Fleet, Russia 
was able to foil her adversaries and extend 
her coast southward, took possession of 
the Amour province and founded the Fort- 
ress of Vladivostok (" Ruler of the 
East"). 

During the next decade, England was 
chiefly occupied with the great Indian 
mutiny and its effects and her attention was 
required in other regions removed from the 
Near East. Russia, too, was fully engaged 
in the re-organisation of her empire, the 
final subjection of the Tcherkess tribes in 

185 



The Orient Question 

the Caucasus, steady expansion in Central 
Asia, and consoHdation in the Far East. 

In Europe in that period, the first great 
results of modern nation-making were at- 
tained, evolving from the principle of 
" Nationalities," that is, the State as the 
corporate embodiment and will of the 
whole of a race as opposed to the artificial i 

and arbitrary treaty-bond. That bond-of- 
blood principle found its expression in the 
wars of 1859, the making of an Italian uni- 
fied nation in 1861, the Austro-Prussian- 
Italian war of 1866, and the Franco-Ger- 
man war of 1870-71, which created a Ger- 
man unified nation, changed the conditions 
of the balance of power in Europe, and 
resulted in a new grouping of forces into 
the alliances and ententes into which Eu- 
rope is split to-day. J 

The Russo-Turklsh war of 1877-78, was 
undertaken by Russia In the general sup- 
port of the Christians of the Balkans, aid- 
ing Servia and Montenegro, creating 
Bulgaria, and ending in the Treaty of San 

186 



Near Eastern Problem 

Stephano, which was revised and stultified 
at the congress of Berlin. 

England's opposition to Russia and sup- 
port of Turkey and Islam in that war, 
checking Russia's advance through the Bos- 
porus, but unable to hold her back from 
gaining a foot-hold on the great strategic 
position of the Armenian plateau in Asia, 
off-set by England, to a certain extent, by 
the convention which gave her Cyprus; 
non-intervention by Christendom in the 
Armenian massacres and the obstruction 
of Russia's design to establish an autono- 
mous Turkish and Persian Armenia, ex- 
cited Moslem minds. 

In the train of the Turkish disaster of 
1878, the rising of the Mahdl and Arab! 
Pasha's revolt In Egypt, were but manifes- 
tations of the general dissatisfaction 
throughout all Islam against the Ottoman 
ruler as Khalifa. English anti-Russian 
policy in Moslem Persia, Moslem Afghan- 
istan, Moslem Mid-Asia and Moslem Tur- 
key, was, In theocratic Moslem eyes, being 

187 



The Orient Question 

pro-Islamic, anti-Christian. Besides, did 
not England support Islam everywhere — 
in Morocco, Tunis, Algiers, as against 
Spain and France? A sense of solidarity 
throughout Islam began to be revived rous- 
ing Moslems to arrogant contempt of the 
Christian Powers. The idea of one great 
Islamic realm encircling the Moslem world 
inspired the Afghan ruler Abdur-Rahman 
with a vast and comprehensive plan for its 
accomplishment. The execution of such 
a plan, still to-day un-renounced by his suc- 
cessor in Afghanistan, would be the axe at 
the root of British rule in India. Abdur- 
Rahman, in all naivete submitted this I 
scheme to Queen Victoria expecting the 
aid of England for Islam against the Cross. 
England found it wise to retain the services 
of the Afghan ruler's clever adviser and 
councillor and to prevent his return into 
the council chamber at Cabul. This plan 
of the union of Islam took possession of 
the imagination of Abdul-Hamid and the 
Turks at Stambul; the delegate of the 

i88 



Near Eastern Problem 

Sh.elkh-El-Senussi became the great power 
behind the Ottoman throne. From the 
shores of the Bosporus Pan-Islam was 
spread throughout the world. 

This new revival of Islam crystallizing 
into new political aims, incidentally created 
a new and grave problem for Great Britain 
In India. In Central Asia, Russia was not 
checked by Islam and was soon the neigh- 
bour of British India and Afghanistan and 
weighed more heavily against Persia. The 
policy pursued by England to hinder Rus- 
sian advance failed all along the line : — 
the strengthening of the Turk and Islam, 
the support of the anarchistic element in 
Russia preparing for a great social up- 
heaval, coupled with lurid press-campaigns 
and fiction-literature, depicting Russian hor- 
rors, with the object of inflaming the senti- 
ment of the whole world against Russia; 
the policy of making Persia and Afghanis- 
tan buffer-States between British and Rus- 
sian spheres of Influence, which Involved 
encouragement of the elements of disorder 

189 



The Orient Question 

and the retarding of national progress in 
those two countries, as well as the conven- 
tion between Russia and England forbid- 
ding railroad and other construction in 
Persia. All of these means had proved in- 
effective of their purpose. Russia was 
firmly established in Central Asia and two 
lines of railroad connected the frontiers of 
Persia and Afghanistan with European 
Russia across the wastes of Turkestan. 

Islam had become a danger. England's 
occupation of Egypt gave her the command 
of Suez and of the Red Sea through effec- 
tive possession, but Lord Curzon's plans in 
Arabia which were expected to sever Islam 
into hostile camps made slow headway. 

The events in the Far East, making of 
Russia a potential Pacific naval power, 
with supreme influence in Mongolia, 
Chinese Turkestan and even in Thibet; 
the rise of Japan, an Island Power, threat- 
ening to become a rival of England, oc- 
casioned the plan of an alliance between 
England and Japan against Russia. Japan 

190 



Near Eastern Problem 

would be crippled; and Russia, defeated or 
victorious, would find in the Far East a 
perpetual Japanese question fixing her 
strength and attention In that quarter of 
the globe, a condition favourable to a so- 
cial revolution similar to the French ca- 
tastrophy at the end of the eighteenth 
century. However, the logic was at fault 
which saw analogy between the Russian 
situation and that of France prior to the 
revolution. The misleading elements in 
the situation were failure to rightly ap- 
preciate the foundations of the Russo-Jap- 
anese differences; the Impossibility of 
lasting or sound alliance between two 
naval-powers such as England and Japan; 
the common interests between Russia and 
Japan In the Far East; and the differences 
between France and Russia In regard to 
character and conditions. 

The Russian defeat w^as not crushing, 
it was a repulse; the Japanese victory did 
not exhaust Japan as had been expected, 
but set her up as a real menace to England 

191 



The Orient Question 

and every other power in the Far East and 
Pacific. The result of the war was, indeed 
in many of its bearings, a British disaster 
and also an American defeat. The inte- 
rior revolution in Russia failed — was a 
fiasco — even the Duma did not do the 
work of destruction expected of it, but on 
the contrary, became an instrument of new 
national Russian patriotic sentiment. The 
irresistible outcome of the war after the 
Peace of Portsmouth was an understanding 
between Japan and Russia on the basis of 
their common fundamental interests in the 
Far East, culminating in the present Russo- 
Japanese alliance. 

Blocked on the left flank by the new 
position of Japan in the Far East, Russia 
was thenceforth concentrated in her centre, 
the Persian border and the Armenian 
plateau. 

The situation, metamorphosed in Eu- 
rope by the unifications of Germany and 
Italy, transferred the balance of power into 

192 



Near Eastern Problem 

the hands of the newly created German 
Empire, which secured its position by a 
new grouping of powers. 

The rapid economic development of 
Germany, her unprecedented advance In 
fields of commerce and Industry which, up 
to then, had been considered Great Britain's 
exclusive preserves; the hardship entailed 
thereby to English Industry and trade ; the 
German colonisation and the results of the 
International Colonial Conference in 1882, 
brought about a growing feeling of hos- 
tility between the two countries, which 
found its climax during the British South- 
African war in the so-called Kruger tele- 
gram. British foreign policy. In order, 
not only to provide against Russia In the 
impending struggle In the Far East, where 
Great Britain was supporting Japan by her 
alliance, but also in the Interest of finding 
In Europe an ally who could supply a mili- 
tant land force in any eventful struggle 
with Germany, concluded the entente cor- 
dlale v/ith France. The Morocco clauses 

193 



The Orient Question 

of that arrangement gave Germany the 
pretext to protest. The Algeslras Con- 
ference which followed, proved to Great 
Britain that France without Russia would 
be useless as an ally, and It became evi- 
dently advisable for England to pursue a 
policy of conciliation towards Russia and 
to find means of destroying the Triple Al- 
liance. 

The move forward of Pan-Islam, stim- 
ulated by the victories of Japan over Rus- 
sia, was manifested in Egypt, in Turkey, 
Persia, Afghanistan and In India, where 
the capacity of the Asiatic to defeat the 
European, Inflamed Hindu imagination 
and gave rise to grave agitation against 
British Rule, which agitation became the 
more dangerous for reason of the Japanese 
imperialistic policy In regard to Asiatic na- 
tions in the Far East. 

The growth of German Influence In 
Asiatic Turkey, the Bagdad Railway 
scheme and concessions, and the accom- 

194 



Near Eastern Problem 

panying German colonisation revealed to 
England a new PoweS* on the path to In- 
dia. 

The constitutional movement In Persia, 
the proclamation of a constitution, which 
it was thought might, to certain extent, 
be used against Russian influence, met the 
fate of all constitutions in Moslem lands 
and the experiment ended in anarchy. A 
Russo-English agreement to define the 
spheres of influence became necessary as 
the sole means of stemming Muscovite in- 
tervention in Persia. In the wake of this 
arrangement came the Russo-German 
agreement concerning railroad construction 
in Persia and Asiatic Turkey. 

England, in her search for allies in Eu- 
rope to help her face Germany, nearly suc- 
ceeded in 1908, in closing the ring around 
her enemy, and her prospective ally, Aus- 
tria, was to have been paid with the free 
road to Salonika. Turkey and Germany 
defeated the move. The work prepara- 

195 



The Orient Question 

tory for an advance southward was con- 
tinued by Austria, whose success would 
have meant not only the crushing of the 
independent Serb States but in reaching 
Salonika she would have hemmed in Italy. 
The understanding discussed between Aus- 
tria and France in 1908, would have placed 
Italy between two foes, one in command 
of the Western, the other in command of 
the Eastern Mediterranean, and Italy's 
war against Turkey which was resented 
by England, France and Austria, arose 
partly from Italy's necessity to gain a basis 
on the opposite shores of the Mediterra- 
nean, in Tripoli, capable of exercising pres- 
sure on French-North-Africa in the West 
and on Egypt on the East, and also to 
neutralise an eventual Austrian naval base 
at Salonika, a port destined to become one 
of the great commercial and military gate- 
ways of the Eastern Mediterranean. 

Russia had regained her militant 
strength. Her alliance with Japan, releas- 
ing in all Far Eastern affairs forces ena- 

196 



Near Eastern Problem 

bling her to exercise a greater pressure in 
Central Asia, was once again a formidable 
factor in Europe. 

It was Russia's good will which allowed 
Italy to go forward in her war with Tur- 
key and restrained England, France and 
Austria from taking steps hostile to that 
campaign. 

The Franco-Russian alliance has had 
the good effect of keeping the peace In Eu- 
rope. Russian policy has been to restrain 
France from precipitation in any crisis, and 
It Is due to Russian influence that an ami- 
cable settlement has been found possible In 
all aggravating Incidents that have oc- 
curred between France and Germany dur- 
ing the last twenty years. As has been 
said, there exists no real cause of war be- 
tween Germany and Russia ; the cost of war 
between those two powers would far out- 
weigh any possible gain to either. The 
only likely cause of war would be in the 
supposed event of Germany giving military 
support to Austrian aggression in the Bal- 

197 



The Orient Question 

kan Peninsula, but since the rise of the new 
Balkan League possessing a million bayo- 
nets, any advantages to be gained by 
Germany in fighting Austria's fight have 
become of questionable value. 

England, to gain Russian alliance, will 
have to pay a price commensurate with the 
risks involved. In that connection, an in- 
teresting theory was put forward in the 
Anglo-Russian discussions and, prior to the 
sudden rise of the new Balkan giant, found 
much support in England. The sugges- 
tion was to boldly give Russia her needed 
and far-sought warm water-port by allow- 
ing her a strip of land to the Persian Gulf. 
The partisans of that theory believed that 
with the final attainment of such a port 
which has formed the object of Russia's 
ceaseless pursuit for over a hundred years, 
all danger to India from that Power would 
vanish; as it has been observed that Rus- 
sia, in the sole interest of territorial ag- 
grandizement, never seeks the conquest of 
thickly populated countries, but occupies 

198 



Near Eastern Problem 

only lands that are sparsely inhabited. At 
the present instant the perplexity occa- 
sioned by the sensational advent of the 
Balkan States as a new and portentous 
Power has given rapid rise in England to 
another conception, which, while retaining 
the old pro-Austrian policy, would recog- 
nise German special interests in Asiatic 
Turkey, where Germany would encounter 
Russia. 

The Austrian proposals to enforce clause 
XXIII of the Berlin treaty menaced the 
very existence of the Balkan States and 
precipitated their alliance and war against 
Turkey, which ended in the utter Ottoman 
destruction with capture by the Allies of 
over two hundred and fifty thousand men, 
rank and file of the Turkish army with 
over 1600 pieces of artillery and com- 
pelled the ejection of the Turk from Eu- 
rope. That swift campaign changed the 
whole character of the Near Eastern Ques- 
tion. 

199 



The Orient Question 

The status quo In the Balkan Peninsula, 
which was considered by Great Britain to 
be a necessity for her defence of India and 
Suez, has not been destroyed, it has 
merely become stable and passed from the 
hands of a usurper into those of its right- 
ful guardians, the AlHed Balkan States. 
Should a great Power like Austria gain 
access to the Peninsula and possession of 
the central position of the Servian plateau, 
or be able to turn that position by taking 
It In the rear, through an Austrian or even 
Austro-Italian protectorate in Albania, the 
balance of power represented by the status 
quo would not only be modified but would 
be completely disestablished, with the ruin- 
ous consequences against which Great Brit- 
ain has so long and at such a sanguinary 
price sought to fortify herself. Further- 
more, the supposition that the Turks, in 
the presence of the changes now occurring, 
can ever again be able to hold the Bosporus 
and the Dardanelles, Is equally a fallacy, 
based on the difficulty of correctly and in- 

200 



Near Eastern Problem 

stantly gauging the magnitude and portent 
of those changes. 

The Allied States forming the new Bal- 
kan Power will henceforth take their place 
in the Concert of Europe, and have their 
voice in all those questions of the Near 
East deahng with the adjustments of the 
interests in that region of Great Britain, 
Russia, Germany, Italy, Persia and 
Turkey. 



20I 



CHAPTER III 

THE FAR EASTERN AND PACIFIC 
SITUATION 

THE Far Eastern and Pacific situation 
are intimately linked into a single 
problem, which, from being a race for com- 
mercial and colonial expansion in the early 
nineteenth century, has, with the first years 
of the new century, become a question, of 
which the dominating factor is Japan and 
Japanese Interests In conflict with those of 
various western nations in the course of 
their trade expansions in that region. 

The dynamic elements of that situation 
are : — the vast agglomeration of buyers 
called China; the approaches to that still 
unpre-empted market of supposedly un- 
limited absorptive capacity; the exigencies 
of national defence imposed upon Japan 

202 



Far East and Pacific 

by her geographical conditions; and her 
necessity of securing her position against 
any pressure which the west could bring to 
bear to force the subordination of her own 
vital economic interests to those of other 
nations. 

China, where the interests of all na- 
tions converge, is composite of peoples re- 
lated racially, but dissimilar in tongue and 
mentality. A State-formation several 
thousand years old, — a structure of fam- 
ily, society and State, based on an ethical 
and philosophical principle, which has, dur- 
ing the many centuries moulded the whole 
life into an appearance of uniformity, giv- 
ing the illusion of a single organism of fixed 
and regular functions. 

China is awakening; '' new China," is 
an expression heard on all sides. Inspired 
by the spectacle of the swift re-organisa- 
tion of Japan in adapting her interior 
life to new conditions, expectations draw 
parallels between that country and China, 

203 



The Orient Question 

but there are no true grounds for such com- 
parisons. Japan, even old Japan, always 
possessed a social and State-organisation 
embodying a continuity of national Ideal, 
which, in efficient formulation of purpose, 
bore analogy with the western State or- 
ganisations. Such embodiment of national 
conception has never existed in China. 
There Is no basis for accomplishing in 
China what has been accomplished in 
Japan, whatever form of organisation may 
finally be evolved from the static chaos 
in China. 

Japan had its national traditions, its 
feudal and strong military organisations, 
it was never submitted to foreign rule. 
The ideal was essentially Japan for the 
Japanese. This assertion of the idea of 
national entity and national genius, which 
in turn, expressed Itself in the social hier- 
archy, ranking the soldier, the agriculturer 
and the artist above all other classes, that 
is, the defender and the creator, above the 
middle-man and exploiter, caused Japan to 

204 



Far East and Pacific 

evolve in the Interest of those Ideals. 
The material means and the outer forms 
changed, but New Japan remained Old 
Japan at heart. 

Not so with China, whose hierarchy 
was, first, the litterateur — maker of 
poems and classical annotator — then, the 
agrlculturer, the artisan, the merchant, and 
last of all, the soldier. 

The soul of Japan was a sword; — the 
soul of China, seemingly, literary sophism, 
paper-facsimile — in reality a force un- 
sheathed. 

The mentahty of the Chinese people is 
best discovered in its philosophic system, 
that of Confucius, reaching deep down into 
the racial temperament. This creed can 
be summed up in three articles of belief : — - 
the sacredness of the family institutions, 
ancestor-worship, dependent upon the first, 
and third, of the paramount duty of labour. 
For thousands of years the Chinese have 

205 



The Orient Question 

only asked from their rulers the right to 
live and labour peaceably within the limits 
of that creed. China, during the several 
thousand years of her history, has passed 
through many convulsions being often split 
into several States, or united into one, fall- 
ing almost indifferently, under native or for- 
eign governance. The people lived their 
rulers down. So long as they were able 
to labour and live and their customs and 
ideas were not violently interfered with, 
the constituted Government received the 
respect and obedience of the masses. But 
any public disaster, of flood or famine, was 
taken as a sign that the ancestral throng 
were not properly propitiated by the rulers, 
against whom it became the peoples' duty 
to revolt, in obedience to the heavenly dis- 
pleasure. These movements proceeding 
in reality from economic grievances were 
not political but superstitional. 

Meadows, one of the greatest authori- 
ties on China, said about sixty years ago, 
" The Chinese are the most rebellious and 

206 



Far East and Pacific 

the least revolutionary people on earth." 
Always ready to rebel, no race responds 
so quickly as they to good government. 

A Chinese proverb says: — "The Yel- 
low River may change its bed, but its 
waters will remain as muddy as before." 

The immediate assimilation of western 
ideas, imported into China by a handful of 
Chinese educated abroad, cannot be ex- 
pected, any more than that a paper-consti- 
tution, substituting a republic for a mon- 
archy, should over night, by the mere fact 
of its proclamation, do away with vice, and 
graft ("squeeze"), give higher wages, 
abolish starvation and make the poor man 
rich. As if a savage from the Congo, by 
donning an evening suit, a white shirt front 
and a silk hat, should by reason of that 
apparel, become at once, a civilised being. 

Changes, proposing to alter the whole 
nature and traditions of a nation extending 
back for centuries and tens of centuries, 
and to up-root all the ethics and philosophy 
of a race, cannot be accomplished in the 

207 



The Orient Question 

short space of a few years or even a few 
generations. However, with a rapidity 
hitherto unshown in the world^s history the 
Chinese have adopted in sudden and stu- 
pendous proportion, contrivances of west- 
tern civilisation. Whether those contri- 
vances will breed western ideals and 
acceptations, remains for a remoter future 
to prove. 

China has a problem of increasing pop- 
ulation, which hitherto, has been largely 
regulated during the centuries by constantly 
recurring famines, pestilences and revolts, 
but with the adoption of sanitary and hy- 
gienic conditions resulting in the conserva- 
tion of human lives coupled with the intro- 
duction of labour-saving devices, this ques- 
tion must become formidable; such condi- 
tions, yielding overwhelming tides of hu- 
man material for industrial slavery must 
affect the economic destinies of other coun- 
tries. 

To these conditions which cannot fail to 
enter into the calculations of the foreign 

208 



; Far East and Pacific 

countries interested in China, must be added 
the further Chinese characteristics which 
have made it possible throughout the cen- 
turies for foreign rulers to enter China, 
sieze the Vermillion pencil and impose 
rule upon the multitude of millions without 
much opposition, and for the recent revo- 
lution to be achieved by a few western stu- 
dents in regard to whose movements the 
masses remained apathetic. This state of 
public indifference as to the personality of 
the ruler or the type of government is 
further illustrated by the Vice-president of 
the new republic in China who advised the 
President Yuan-Shi-Kai to sieze the Dra- 
gon-throne, proclaim himself Emperor of 
China and so end the anarchy and difficul- 
ties which had resulted from the revolt. 
The opinion is widely expressed among 
men who have taken part in the overthrow 
of the Manchus, that a western form of 
republican government is unsuited to the 
needs and contrary to the traditions of the 
Chinese people. 

209 



The Orient Question 

The repubhcan party Is pulled between 
one or another of the systems expounded 
by the few students who had been edu- 
cated in western Universities, and the un- 
yielding principles of Confucian ethics. 
Confucianism, in sum, exemplifies another 
though paradoxical view of democratic 
principles, its system of administration be- 
ing based on learning and examination yet 
with one central absolute head: self-gov- 
ernment and autocracy in one. Herein lies, 
perhaps, the explanation why so little has 
been done in the direction of constitution 
building. The tendency appears to be to- 
wards the final triumph of the moderate 
reformers whose number daily increases, 
and whose ideal Is a constitutional mon- 
archy on foundations built upon the old 
Chinese traditions. This group is vio- 
lently opposed by the reformers from Can- 
ton, who are determined to out- Japanese 
the Japanese in the westernization of 
China. 

It Is the Cantonese, the Chinamen of 

2IO 



-.-'•v 




L-H 



Map of the Far East 



Far East and Pacific 

the south, who are the moving spirits, pos- 
sessing free impulse and the organizing 
mind. The population of central and 
northern China are a passive race, ready 
to recognise a conqueror, and the northern 
and central parts of China are quite dif- 
ferent in characteristics: socially, racially 
and politically, from the southern prov- 
inces. 

The great Taiping rebellion, which 
lasted for more than twenty years, was 
under Cantonese direction, and, back of all 
pretexts and provocations, its real causes 
were dissatisfaction with economic condi- 
tions. 

The collapse of the Manchu dynasty, 
the so-called " revolution," was in part, a 
movement directed from Canton, and, in 
the opinion of many observers, may con- 
ceivably end in the separation of these 
southern provinces from the rest of China. 

In this connection, it may be useful to 
remember that in the earlier periods up to 
the twelfth century, there existed two 

211 



The Orient Question 

empires In the great alluvial plains of the 
two great rivers, the Hoangho and the 
Yangtze-Kiang; one In the north around 
Peking as capital, more tartaric, called the 
Empire of the Kin, and in the south, the 
pure Chinese realm of the Song, with Han- 
kow as centre. Tchinghiz Khan and his 
successors united into one all the Chinese 
and Mongol lands, but were overthrown by 
a pure Chinese reaction under the lead of 
the Ming, — the dynasty which from 1368, 
up to 1644 occupied the throne of the 
^' Son of Heaven," first In the southern 
capital of Nanking and then in Peking In 
the north. In 1644 ^^^Y were replaced 
by conquest by the Tsing dynasty, rulers 
of Manchuria, Manchu Tartars and de- 
scendants of the former Tartaric rulers of 
the Empire of the Hoang-ho or the Kin. 
To-day, the Chinese revolt, having its 
centre In the south is, likewise, a reaction 
against the Tartaric conqueror. 

Under the dynasty of the Tsing, so long 
as those rulers could still count on the sup- 

212 



Far East and Pacific 

port of their war-like Manchu-clansmen, 
the Chinese Empire formed one great unit 
and attained its apogee of power extend- 
ing its rule far out over Mongolia, Tibet, 
Turkestan and south into Anam and Cam- 
bodga — a realm to-day in process of dis- 
solution. 

The States which had been subjugated 
like Mongolia, Turkestan, Tibet, Anam, 
forming a ring around China proper, en- 
closing the two Chinas, north and south, 
began slowly, during this last century with' 
the first real contact between the West and 
China, to fall away from the Chinese Em- 
pire, — ^Anam is to-day a French colony. 
Manchuria, a possession of the Tsing 
dynasty and not of China, Is to-day half 
In Russian, half In Japanese hands. Mon- 
golia and Turkestan declared their Inde- 
pendence from the rule of the Tsing, when 
that dynasty was dethroned and abdicated 
its rule over China, and both Mongolia 
and Turkestan, countries rich in good farm 
soil but sparsely populated, have asked 

213 



The Orient Question 

protection from their stronger neighbour, 
Russia. Tibet is doing the same, falHng 
under Anglo-Indian guardianship. 

The reaction against the Tsing or Man- 
chu dynasty took many forms of revolt 
known under different names to the out- 
side world, but they were rooted all more 
or less, in the same grievances; — so long 
as the Tartar or Manchu clansmen, who in 
their eight Banners, as the descendants of 
the conquerors of China in the seven- 
teenth century, were distributed through 
the empire in form of garrisons, or mili- 
tary colonies, received tribute, and had 
many privileges which distinguished them 
and put them above the Chinese, so long as 
those men were a militant force, the re- 
action against the Manchu rule in the dif- 
ferent revolts were easily suppressed; but 
with the falling off of that Tartar military 
support, while the grievances still subsisted, 
there was no force to impose the recogni- 
tion of those old privileges and the collapse 
of the rule of the Manchus was the result. 

214 



Far East and Pacific 

The powerlessness of the Chinese throne 
at Peking to suppress the revolt of the Tai- 
plng without European aid, gave evidence 
of the decay of the Manchu power and of 
the deterioration of the forces upon which 
that foreign rule had relied to impose it- 
self upon China. This fact was finally 
recognised by the Throne itself, when the 
unfortunate Emperor Kwang-Shu, in 1898, 
outlined his famous reform edict, which is 
in line with the constructive policy out- 
lined by Yuan-Shl-Kal in November, 191 1. 

Had the Manchu dynasty been capable 
of achieving those reforms, removing the 
grievances which galled the Chinese most, 
they might have maintained their sway, es- 
pecially as there was no deep or violently 
formulated resentment against them in the 
masses of the people; they might, by de- 
grees have reconstructed the administra- 
tion with representative government and 
parliament on bases In harmony with 
Chinese customary philosophic thought 
and conceptions. 

215 



The Orient Question 

China came first into contact with the Oc- 
cident in the time when Alexander the 
Great made his conquests in Asia, and the 
Macedonian Empire stretched itself up to 
the Plateau of the Roof of the World and 
the sources of the Tarim River. Greek 
merchants brought the silks of China to the 
west and Greek and Persian Influences 
penetrated the Flowery Kingdom and left 
their traces In the Chinese art. That In- 
tercourse was Interrupted when Eastern 
Asia became the centre of those vast mon- 
golic convulsions of conquests which hurled 
their hordes Into China as well as Into the 
Occident, and shattered Rome, Indirectly 
causing the fall, first of the western, and 
finally of the eastern Roman Empire, 
which were forced by the new-comers to 
give place to other formations. 

When the Turk, a product of eastern 
Asia, where, still to-day, his brother Turk 
lives as nomad, took Constantinople and 
blocked the road for the caravans from 
the Occident to China and other parts of 

216 



Far East and Pacific 

the Far Orient, and new roads were found 
to the Indies and the East, the Portuguese, 
the discoverers of those new pathways, 
were the first to found a factory on Chinese 
territory, as they were the first Europeans, 
since the Venetian Marco Polo, to step on 
Chinese soil^ The Spaniards followed the 
watery track eastwards. The Dutch in 
turn, freed from Spanish Hapsburg, went 
to wrest the rule of the Oceans from Portu- 
guese and Spaniard, occupied the East In- 
dian Archipelago and Formosa, and as- 
serted themselves there against Japan and 
Spain, and found themselves In touch with 
the struggle In China, between Mink and 
Manchu conqueror. Formosa became Chi- 
nese, first taken by the Ming, who, in turn, 
were vanquished by the Manchu. Those 
were the days when the Manchu Tartars 
from Manchuria submitted China to their 
rule, when the Portuguese and the Dutch 
knocked gently on the Sea doors of China, 
while the wild Cossack-leader of the Rus- 
sian advance harshly made his presence 

217 



The Orient Question 

known In the north to the new Son of 
Heaven, the ruler of Manchuria. 

Soon in the seventeenth century, France 
and England opened their trading stations 
in the Far East, the missionary, the ad- 
vance man of foreign intrusion into any 
country dubbed barbaric or semi-barbaric 
— but good as colony or market — en- 
tered China and Japan. In Japan, this 
role of the missionary, who, unconsciously 
doubles his usefulness beyond his conscious 
aim, was soon perceived, and finding pre- 
text in the fight between Jesuits and Fran- 
ciscans, between Catholics and Protestants,^ 
the candid answer of the Spanish mariner 
to the Shogun became the signal for hos- 
tility towards all foreigners. Japan was 
closed to the West and remained so into 
the middle of the nineteenth century. 

In China, at the end of the eighteenth 
century synchronising with the great 
French upheaval in Europe after the death 

1 " First comes the missionary, then the merchant 
and the soldier." 

2l8 



Far East and Pacific 

of the last strong Emperor, the weakness 
of the Manchus became first apparent. 
The signs of a loosened grip emboldened 
the many secret societies like the " White 
Lily," the " Triads," etc., which had been 
founded several centuries earlier under the 
reigns of the Ming dynasty, as mutual aid 
associations, but which, under the Manchu 
rule, became centres of southern reaction 
against the Mongol. Under the rallying 
formula of " Ming-shin " or " Ming- 
chao " expressions of double meaning 
"rule of light" or rule of the "Ming" 
— it was again the case of the south against 
the north and in the last decades of the 
eighteenth and the first nineteenth centu- 
ries, these societies fomented extensive re- 
volts, even for a moment capturing the Im- 
perial residence at Peking. 

Suppressed by a stern hand outwardly, 
these societies survived as the protectors 
of the local interests of pirates and land- 
robbers in the southern provinces. From 
that time on, the whole revolt had assumed 

219 



The Orient Question 

more or less the character of piracy, or- 
ganised looting and robbing. During the 
nineteenth century, piracy and robbery be- 
came an organised status In southern 
China, a means of livelihood, a chronic 
expression of general malcontent, fostered 
and kept up by the over-crowding of popu- 
lation forming veritable ant-hills of half- 
starved peoples, and lack of common hon- 
esty In all departments of public life un- 
der the fee system of remuneration of pub- 
lic service. The interior difficulties of the 
Chinese central government of the Man- 
chu rulers were Increased by the so-called 
Opium war with Great Britain in 1839 
and 1 841-2. Powerless to prevent the 
clandestine sale of Indian opium, for smok- 
ing, which was smuggled into China, the 
Chinese authorities, in June, 1839, seized 
20,000 opium cases from India, which 
were ready to be smuggled into Canton and 
threw them Into the sea. A British fleet 
intervened in favour of the smuggling 
merchants, who were English, and block- 

220 



Far East and Pacific 

aded Canton, Amoy and Shanghai. Finally 
the Chinese Government in its weakness, 
was forced to submit, and the famous con- 
vention of Nanking was signed, admitting 
the Indian opium, and opening several 
ports for British trade in China. The 
privileges secured in the convention of 
Nanking by England were soon extended 
to the other western commercial Powers. 
The West was in firm contact with China. 
This encroachment was resented by the 
natives and in 1850, Hung-Siutsen, of the 
Clan of Hung in the Province of Canton, 
started a revolt against the Manchu, called 
the *' Tai-ping "— " the Great Peace.'' 
The revolt, essentially anti-foreign, bore 
also some tinges of reform and was also 
supposed to involve some interests of the 
Christian religion in China. The move- 
ment rapidly gained all of the southern 
provinces, crossed the Hoang-ho and 
Yangtze-kiang, reached up to the very 
doors of Peking. In 1853 Hung, as the 
head of the rebellion, established his head- 

221 



The Orient Question 

quarters at Nanking, the old Capital of 
the south. ^ 

Simultaneous with the revolt of the Tal- 
ping, the Musulmen In China, living In the 
Yunan, Sze-Tchuen and Shensl, revolted 
and founded a Mahomedan State with cen- 
tre at Tall-fu. The Imperial Government 
at Peking was powerless to subdue the one 
or the other. The Interference of the 
rebels with the foreigners who had come 
to China, gave occasion for active Inter- 
vention from the West, and France and 
England landed troops In China. The 
treaty of Tlen-Tzlen, which ended that 
war in i860, gave further trading rights 
to the western nations. Russia also prof- 
ited by those Interior troubles, and by the 
treaties of Algun In 1858, and of Peking 

1 A characteristic of the Tai-ping rebellion was the 
giving up of the pig-tail. The pig-tail, being a fash- 
ion imposed by the Manchus on the Chinese who wore 
their hair long and loase, until they were brought to 
submission, when their locks had again to be braided 
into a cue; in this latest revolution they have taken 
the precaution to crop it close to the head. 

222 



Far East and Pacific 

in i860, was recognised by China as the 
possessor of the Amour territory and the 
coast-line up to the Oussouri River where 
Russia founded Vladivostok. France ob- 
tained China's consent to occupy Cambodge 
and Cochinchina, England gained Hong- 
kong, and a Franco-Anglo-Chinese corps, 
under " Chinese" Gordon, undertook the 
suppression of the Tai-ping rebellion. 
Slowly France, from Cochinchina, worked 
her way up penetrating far through Annam 
and Tonking, till she bordered China 
proper, touching the province of Yunan. 
England progressed also from the south, 
occupying Burma, and other points till she 
reached Tibet on one side, and China 
proper on the other. Russia, in the west, 
aproached Chinese Turkestan and en- 
larged her influence in Mongolia. 

In China proper, the Manchu rule had 
in fact, already collapsed with the begin- 
ning of the Tai-ping revolt. That rebel- 
lion with its enormous loss of life and the 
ensuing famines more destructive still, 

223 



The Orient Question 

cleared, for the moment, the pressing over- 
crowding of the population and, as in the 
case of former Chinese uprisings, the re- 
volt took the form of organised piracy and 
robbery under the protection of the secret 
benevolent aid societies. 

The year 1894 can be considered as the 
turning point of a new period in Far East- 
ern conditions. Japan, which had been 
opened to the outside world by an Ameri- 
can squadron, and afterwards was menaced 
in the north by a Russian fleet, perceiving 
danger to Japanese exclusiveness from the 
West, began under the leadership of her 
Emperor to reform, and undertook to as- 
sert her own power and position in the Far 
East. By the year 1894, Japan, prepared 
for the task she had set for herself by 
twenty years of work, re-organisation and 
adaptations of western methods and west- 
ern arms of defence and offence, came into 
conflict with China over the suzerainty over 
Korea. In the ensuing war the Men of 
Nippon were the victors; they had tested 

224 



Far East and Pacific 

that instrument which had been formed to 
assert not only their independence but their 
dominance in that quarter of the world. 

The defeat by Japan had its reverbera- 
tion in China, the lead in putting forth 
the idea of reform and consolidation to 
strengthen that crumbling old building to 
hold the advanced spirits, came again from 
the south. The " friends " of China in the 
Occident who came forward to save the 
Celestial Empire from Japan's grip, de- 
manded heavy payments for their services 
In the form of all kinds of railroad and 
other concessions and territorial positions. 
Signs of unrest became greater In China, a 
society was founded by Li-PIng-Heng 
called the I-Ho-Thuen and I-Ho-Tuan, the 
volunteer patriotic movement. Some Eng- 
lishman who saw the Chinese gymnastic 
exercises and drills, gave them the name of 
*' Boxer." The Idea was somewhat akin 
to that of the German " Turn-vater," Jahn, 
preparing young Germany for the wars of 
liberation in 1813-14. The "Triad" 

225 



The Orient Question 

(benevolent society) in Canton also at- 
tempted to rise again. The Emperor 
Hwang-Shu, in 1898, following the coun- 
sel of some of the more progressive men, 
proclaimed the famous edict of reforms. 
Intrigues in the palace, discontent, in gen- 
eral, and the Boxers or I-Ho-Tuan began 
under the lead of General Tung-fu-tzlang 
a general antl-forelgn movement. The 
Court of Peking Itself was divided. The 
Foreign Legations were summoned to 
leave Peking within 24 hours at expiration 
of which, China would declare war against 
the foreign troops landed from the fleet 
at Tlen-tzln. That movement was crushed, 
the Japanese, the Russians, and afterwards, 
all other nations, sent troops and Peking 
was taken. Russia occupied Manchuria; 
and from that time the Industrial nations 
of the West have been in more bold and 
open competition for China as the great 
world market, and demanded the " open 
door " of equal opportunity for every- 
body. 

226 



Far East and Pacific 

Japan took advantage of that policy of 
the " open door," the prevailing antag- 
onism between Great Britain and Rus- 
sia, and the anti-Russian campaign in the 
press of the English-speaking peoples, to 
obtain the aid of the Anglo-Saxons in the 
execution of her own plans of expansion. 
The countries of the west, blinded by those 
antagonisms and influences, and believing 
in the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon over 
the Yellow Japanese, who, as was thought, 
would never be able to emancipate himself 
from the benevolent tutelage of the Eng- 
lish-speaking peoples, and who, after fight- 
ing with Russia, would have more than 
ever need of Anglo-Saxon support, gave 
Japan all the assistance required for a war 
with Russia. The aftermath of the vic- 
tory did not find the Japanese in mood to 
recognise that benevolence to the disadvan- 
tage of its own economic interests and the 
open door in Manchuria became de facto 
an empty expression; furthermore, the re- 
cent adversaries disconcerted both their ill- 

227 



The Orient Question 

wishers and well-wishers, by an alliance in- 
spired by the recognition that eternal 
enmity would be paralysing to both. Rus- 
sia had been brought to admit that her ex- 
periment in the Pacific would have never 
made her a great Pacific Power but would 
have displaced to a great extent her natural 
trend of gravity. Japan, too, saw that 
both have common interests in that part of 
the world, which are by nature contrary to 
the economic interests of the western na- 
tions, and that her most vital considera- 
tions must henceforth concern events in the 
Pacific Ocean and China, bearing on the 
conflict of foreign ambitions in that realm, 
and the destiny of those provinces which, 
through the Manchu dynasty, had pos- 
sessed a personal link with China. 

The West, especially the United States, 
has taken an interest in the revolt by Young 
China and the collapse of the Manchu. 
The West looks forward to the markets 
and commercial advantages of a reor- 
ganised Young China, whose reorganisa- 

228 



Far East and Pacific 

tion based on the " open door " — they 
support as means of contesting Japanese 
and Russian designs and pretensions. 

The mass of the Chinese people are in- 
ert, an " inert mass " as Prince Ito said, 
a slow-thinking and slow-moving mass of 
agricultural people, born and bred in an- 
cestor worship and patriarchal theism, re- 
garding the Emperor as the Heaven-ap- 
pointed centre, the crown of their family 
system, who at seed and harvest time, at 
flood and famine time, is the Invoker of 
good and the averter of evil. Against 
that belief, the fundamental truth for that 
people during more than two thousand 
years, is the reform movement led by the 
leader of the radical T^ung Meng Hui, Dr. 
Sun Yat Sen, who, with his club of young 
men educated in Europe, heads that 
society and also the newly-formed Kus- 
Ming-tong, whose doctrine is to relegate 
to the region of philosophical curiosity the 
old wisdoms of Confucius and Mencius, 
putting in their stead, as bases of practical 

229 



The Orient Question 

politics, the theories of Jean Jacques Rous- 
seau and Mill, so replacing China's old 
social status of the " Three relations," by 
unfettered individualism. 

What these clashing forces will bring 
forth only the future can show. The 
Cantonese call for a China for the Canto- 
nese, in this regard we must not forget the 
objection which the land of the Ho has 
against the land of the Kiang. Even if 
the Cantonese should succeed and estab- 
lish a rule in Canton, it is more than prob- 
able that the conditions of that republic 
would ressemble conditions in the China- 
town of the United States cities — a per- 
petual strife of factions — a war of tongs. 

The Chinese are a people averse in prin- 
ciple to all finality; as can be seen in the 
case of the Emperor whose Imperial title 
still exists; he has merely retired, and en- 
joys the homage of courtesy, only, instead 
of that of fealty. 

Out of that chaos a man of destiny ought 
to appear, by the axiom that great histori- 

230 



Far East and Pacific 

cal necessities have always ready the man 
for the event. The army has come into 
conflict of divergency of view with Young 
China and become uncontrollable. A mili- 
tary league, similar to that in Turkey, is 
already In existence. The President, 
Yuan Shi Kal, finds difficulty In exercising 
the executive function ; signs are not absent 
of a sturdy reaction which would restore 
the ancient ways, the vital Confucian 
morality and old social structure at whose 
apex Is the Dragon Throne. But a good 
harvest has proved the best conciliator, 
and the people, less rebellious, are prone 
to cease from troubling about reforms and 
'' Young China.'' 

Whether or not the man of destiny ap- 
pear. Young China will not have been in 
vain. Whatever be the outcome, the dom- 
inant factor for the outside world, the fac- 
tor which will determine the conditions of 
the balance of power in the Far East, is 
Japan, aided by her natural ally, Rus- 
sia. 

231 



The Orient Question 

Japan, an island State, which alone of 
all the countries of Asia, has never been 
submitted to conquest, was, after a seclu- 
sion of over two centuries, open to foreign 
trade. First, an American, and then a Rus- 
sian fleet, made Japan understand that her 
independence might be in danger. From 
that time forth all Japanese effort was 
aimed at the defence of her independence. 
Both her interior policy of re-organisation 
and her foreign policy has as guiding prin- 
ciple the constant assertion of that inde- 
pendence. 

In the school of the West, she soon 
learned that her geographic position is 
similar to that of Great Britain and that 
the maxims which history has proved to 
be true in the case of the Island State in 
the Atlantic must be true for her. 

So long as England neglected to per- 
ceive the truth that the borders of an Is- 
land State are not the shores of her own 
islands, but the opposite coasts of the lands 
bordering the sea in the midst of which she 

232 



Far East and Pacific 

Is situated, so long was England subjected 
to foreign conquest, or menace of conquest. 
Cromwell first formulated that perception 
into a definite policy of naval supremacy. 
The failure of his successors, the Stuart 
Kings, to understand his work and continue 
it allowed Dutch William to land and take 
possession of England. But William, as 
a Hollander, knew the meaning of the Sea 
and from that time on, that military and 
political principle was recognised In Eng- 
land. 

The spectacle to-day of the tension be- 
tween Germany and England and their com- 
petition In naval construction, evidence 
England's grim consciousness that she must 
be ready for the test of that naval su- 
premacy which not only gives her Immunity 
from menace of conquest, but makes Great 
Britain that great world power she still is. 

In following the history of modern 
Japan, Its tendencies are clearly laid out 
and conditioned by that same fixed axiom 
which in any consideration of Japan can 

233 



The Orient Question 

with profit be repeated, namely, that the 
independence of an island, and its im- 
munity from conquest, lies not in the de- 
fence of its coasts alone, but in the rec- 
ognition that the borders of it are the 
shores which delimit the sea or the ocean 
in the midst of which lies that Island State. 
The means to enforce this principle lies 
in the control of that ocean or sea, backed 
by a strong land-force. 

That principle dictates to England her 
necessity of closely watching the political 
developments of the continental States, and 
where opportune, of taking a modifying 
hand in their affairs, of being able to turn 
the scales in a given situation, and of not 
permitting any one power to become 
strong enough to remain unaffected by any 
coalition which would include Great Bri- 
tain. 

Japan must follow a similar policy on the 
Eastern part of the Eurasian continent. 
Without adequate naval and military equip- 
ment, Japan would be unable to use in its 

234 



Far East and Pacific 

fulness her exceptional position in that 
third of the globe. 

During the period of her seclusion, Japan 
had more or less neglected the islands which 
in former days had been part of her em- 
pire, or had submitted to her influence ; she 
had also neglected Korea, that peninsula 
which, protruding from the Asiatic conti- 
nent, forms a kind of advance or menace 
to herself. 

When Japan was ready, having re-or- 
ganised her interior, and created a navy 
and an army on the best approved Euro- 
pean style, she took stock of the outer sit- 
uation and conditions around her. 

In the north lay the island of Sakhalin, 
which she had been forced to cede to Rus- 
sia, and Russia was also in possession of 
parts of the Asian shores in the northwest. 
Korea, the old bone of contention between 
China and Japan, was under Chinese suze- 
rainty and was fast becoming a Chinese 
province. China, herself, owning the 

235 



The Orient Question 

Asiatic shores opposite Japan, appeared 
to be modernising and developing an army 
and navy, which could use Korea as base. 
In the south, Japan's ocean washed the 
Philippines and the shores of the East In- 
dian Archipelago, through whose narrow 
channels it communicated with the Indian 
Ocean. In the east, Japanese waters 
were limited by the shores of the Ameri- 
can continent, some 6000 miles away, their 
expanse broken only by the great half-way 
house of the ocean, the Hawaii. The 
Philippines were in Spanish hands, the East 
Indian Archipelago in Dutch and Eng- 
lish hands, Hawaii was a Republic, Russia 
held the north. 

The line of least complication and there- 
fore of least resistance, was in the direction 
of China, which, by its suzerainty over 
Korea, was in nearest touch with Japan. 
It was also the weakest power, military 
and naval. Beyond these considerations, 
China had been proclaimed to be the great 

236 



Far East and Pacific 

future market by the western nations; 
Japan had entered the way of industrialism 
and her Increasing population needed an 
outlet. 

The question over Korea between Japan 
and China — a very old question of dis- 
pute — became the reason for the Chino- 
Japanese war of 1894. The Japanese 
army and navy showed their capacity and 
demonstrated that Japan was on the right 
road to assert herself and demand from 
the West recognition of her power and a 
commensurate position In the world. 

The European powers intervened in 
China's favour, receiving from China some- 
thing In return, and frustrated Japan In 
the conditions she endeavoured to obtain 
by the treaty of Shimonosekl, imposed by 
her on China. Russia formed the apex 
of that coalition of western powers, she 
was near at hand and could bring pres- 
sure on Japan — who acquiesced. China, 
henceforth out of the field, the attention 
of Nippon was drawn to the menace which 

237 



The Orient Question 

came to her from Russia, that power which 
by its proximity was able to enforce the 
dictates of the West. 

Soon afterward, the Hispano-American 
war changed the naval situation In the 
Pacific. The United States took posses- 
sion of the Philippines and at the same 
time annexed the Hawaii Islands, as a link 
between the shores of the American conti- 
nent and the advanced position of the 
Philippines. That annexation met with 
protest from the Japanese Government. 

The Boxer-troubles In China, which 
allowed Russia to occupy Manchuria, 
brought the fact nearer home to Japan, that 
since the treaty of Shimonosekl, Russia was 
at Port Arthur, and Russian influence was 
strong In Korea. The danger was greater 
from Russia than from the United States. 

Russia and England, the two most im- 
portant powers in the Far East, were In 
antagonism; France, although In alliance 
with Russia, did not count for much in the 
Far East, because of her peculiar Euro- 

238 



Far East and Pacific 

pean situation and was neutralised also, by 
Great Britain's holding the roads to that 
part of the world. 

In this situation Japan held the balance 
of power. There were no common Inter- 
ests between England and Japan, both be- 
ing naval powers by fiat of nature. Eng- 
land's possessions and colonial coast-line In 
the Pacific made her a latent contestant of 
Japan's necessary alms in the Pacific and 
elsewhere. Russia was the land-power, 
with naval ambitions, but top-heavy because 
of those ambitions, which pitched her east- 
ward beyond her natural line of gravity. 
The United States were looming up as the 
Pacific power, having already In preceding 
years acquired the principal positions giv- 
ing, her that supremacy. For her expan- 
sion and defence, Japan stood in need of a 
land-power ally such as either China or 
Russia. China was out of count and Rus- 
sia did not then perceive that the alliance 
offered her by Japan would be of advantage 
in regard to her vital Interests. To parry 

239 



The Orient Question 

the danger of an understanding between 
Russia and Japan, though there was no 
hkehhood of it because of Russia's lack 
of far-seeing statesmen, England made ad- 
vances to Japan, resulting in the Anglo- 
Japanese Alliance. But English states- 
men, underestimating Japan, as had the 
Moscovite, believed that a Russo-Japanese 
war would weaken both powers and create 
between them a lasting hostility, such as to 
preclude any mutual understanding between 
them in the future, and render remote the 
rise of Japan as a great naval power. In 
the United States the question of trade ex- 
pansion, symbolized by that doctrine of the 
" open door," also ranged her on the side 
of Japan, trusting, with something of the 
faith of a young and enthusiastic school- 
boy, in the generous championship of 
American commercial interests by Japan, 
who was evidently expected to relegate her 
own economic interests to a second plan. 

The victory gave far more trophy to 
Japan than it took from Russia, whose re- 

240 



Far East and Pacific 

pulse was mitigated with the gaining of 
very real advantages. Her land-army, 
though forced back by the Japanese was 
never thoroughly defeated, while the sea- 
disaster to the Russian fleet, which made 
Japan the great dominating Sea Power 
of the Far East, concentrated Russia 
where most her interests lay, and with the 
conclusion of the war, she recognised 
her interests in that part of the world to 
be identical with those of her former foe. 

The treaty of Portsmouth opened the 
way for the logical Russo-Japanese Al- 
liance. 

Japan renewed her alliance with Eng- 
land, thus preventing England from enter- 
ing into alliance with any other power, a 
move which was eagerly reciprocated from 
the English side, which feared that the 
treaty of Portsmouth might be directly fol- 
lowed by a Russo-Japanese, anti-English 
treaty. Subsequently the Russo-Japanese 
treaty became a reality. 

By the treaty of Portsmouth, Japan re- 
241 



The Orient Question 

celved control of Korea and the southern 
part of Manchuria, where she now pos- 
sesses a market for her products, a market 
that does not consider the possibility of an 
open door. 

The position of both Russia and Japan 
in regard to China is the same, a position 
similar to that which England and France 
occupied in regard to Germany before 1866 
and 1870. One, the land-power, the other 
the sea-power, both menaced by a third, 
which in the one case, was an agglomera- 
tion of States forming a mere geographical 
expression, as in the other, that third is a 
chaos suffering from over-population, mis- 
rule and corruption. As the erection of 
German unity and power was, de facto, 
disastrous for France and England, so, a 
re-organised, strong and militant China 
would be a perpetual menace to both Japan 
and Eastern Russia — politically and eco- 
nomically. 

Both have in that regard, the same policy 
to pursue, that is, to exercise dominating 

242 



Far East and Pacific 

influence in the interior affairs of the coun- 
try, to guide its economic or other develop- 
ment, to exclude so far as possible all other 
nations from using China as a lever and 
aid against themselves, and to prevent the 
peaceful penetration into their own do- 
minions of the Chinese, who, by huge im- 
migrations, could overwhelm their lands 
or the territories which they have out- 
lined as being fields of expansion for their 
own peoples. So must Japan and Russia 
consider as a natural adversary every other 
nation who would undertake to dominate 
in China. 

The fall of the Manchu dynasty has 
freed from Chinese rule those States, 
Mongolia, Eastern Turkestan, Tibet and 
Manchuria which were bound within the 
Celestial Empire only by their allegiance 
to the person of the Manchu Emperor. 
So it is in pursuance of this policy, that 
Japan and Russia extend their protection 
over these States, giving their third part- 
ner, England, the same facilities in Tibet, 

243 



The Orient Question 

and, by arrangement with the local self- 
governing bodies, as Russia does in Mon- 
golia, or simply by ordinance, as Japan 
is doing in South Manchuria, they take 
measures to prevent those large influxes 
which immigrate from China as soon as 
thriving conditions are established in sur- 
rounding territories. Those protectorates 
are clearly destined to become integral 
parts of dependencies of Russia, Japan 
and England. 

The European nations recognise that 
Japan has become the paramount power 
in the Far East; France has made an ar- 
rangement with Japan; England, with the 
renewal of her alliance in 191 1, tacitly 
acknowledged Japan's hegemony in those 
regions, and by this alliance, safeguard- 
ed her Indian and Indo-Chinese posses- 
sions. 

That situation in the Far East might 
be modified to some extent should Holland, 
which possesses the East Indian Archipel- 
ago, enter into a close alliance or confeder- 

244 



Far East and Pacific 

atlon with Germany. These islands which 
command the entrances from the Indian 
Ocean to the Pacific and the Chinese lit- 
toral would, by the fact of Germany's mili- 
tary and naval power, become a great 
position in any move to check Japan's pre- 
dominance over China. The most im- 
portant position in that archipelago is held 
by the Philippine Islands, in the hand of 
the United States. They occupy, what 
one might term, an offensive advance posi- 
tion in regard to the Chinese coast, of 
which they control the southern part. 

The Monroe doctrine and the defences 
of the United States' shores, the shores in- 
cluded within the limits set by that doctrine, 
the western and eastern shores of both 
Americas, and the island character of that 
land, demand that the United States do 
not consider the shores of the Americas as 
the limits but that the limits of the do- 
minion comprised by that doctrine are the 
shores of the continents to the east and 
west, imposing upon the United States the 

245 



The Orient Question 

necessity of controlling the Atlantic in the 
east and the Pacific in the west. That 
control is the conditio sine qua non of the 
enforcement of the Monroe doctrine. 

With the triumph of that doctrine, 
through the Spanish-American war, the ac- 
quisition of the Philippines and the Hawaii 
Islands, became a strategic necessity. 
This necessity forced the United States to 
take a great interest in the balance of 
power in the Far East, made them 
the champion of the " open door " in 
China, and led them to seek a combination 
of powers able to counter-balance the mili- 
tant forces of Russia and Japan. The 
same misconceptions as those influencing 
Great Britain caused the United States to 
support Japan against Russia. The 
further move to enforce Japan's promise 
of the " open door " in Manchuria, and 
the famous proposal for internationalising 
the railroads in Manchuria had the effect 
of driving both States to a more rapid 
recognition of their mutual and common 

246 



Far East and Pacific 

interests and hastened the conclusion of 
the Russo-Japanese Alliance. 

That alliance enables Japan to now con- 
sider the enunciation of an exclusion doc- 
trine for Eastern Asia similar to the Mon- 
roe doctrine for the Americas. 

In that connection the Philippines are 
fast assuming a position relative to the 
Japanese Islands, similar to that occupied 
by Korea before the Russo-Japanese war. 

Japan's industries claim the markets of 
the Far East as peculiarly their own. 
They cannot, and most likely will not, even 
in the future, be able to compete with Eng- 
lish and American or German merchandise 
under a regime of the open door — ergo, 
the advisability of closing the door. 

The Philippines, — to a country, master 
of sufficient land and sea power to fully 
profit by the advantages they bestow — is 
the position from which the '' open door " 
policy can be enforced. 

The Hawaii Islands, the great midway 
naval base and coaling station, are neces- 

247 



The Orient Question 

sary to the United States for the enforce- 
ment of her Monroe doctrine and for the 
defence of her own territory against 
encroachment from the Asiatic side, the 
Philippines in that regard being an advance 
post only. 

The Philippines are, in foreign hands, 
a menace to the Japanese doctrine of ex- 
elusion in the Far East, but their posses- 
sion, with Hawaii, would make Japan in- 
vulnerable against attack, on condition 
always, that her militant forces were such 
as to be able to use those positions. 

The adjustment of these divergent in- 
terests Is destined to test to the uttermost 
the relative forces — militant and diplo- 
matic, of the Powers on the opposed sides 
of the Pacific Ocean. 



248 



CHAPTER IV 

THE AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

THE American naval strategist, Ad- 
miral Mahan, says in his book on 
Naval Strategy, (1911), page 103: — 
" By a curious irony the Spanish war which 
led to the triumph of the Monroe doctrine, 
by the same stroke brought the United 
States into the concerns of the European 
family of nations to a degree never antici- 
pated by our ancestors." 

The Monroe doctrine is that principle 
of American policy which proclaims non- 
interference by any non-American State in 
the affairs of either the northern or south- 
ern American Continent, and that no part 
of either of those Continents shall pass 
from the nations at present possessing it 
into the hands of non-American nations. 

249 



The Orient Question 

The main approaches of the United 
States heing by sea, that continent has the 
relative character of an island, which im- 
poses upon it the same basic policies in its 
foreign relations as those which the geo- 
graphical conditions impose upon the is- 
land-positions of Great Britain and Japan. 

The Monroe doctrine consciously or un- 
consciously was a recognition of that is- 
land character. So must the United 
States also apply the axiom : — that the 
independence of an island-State, its im- 
munity from conquest lies not in the defence 
of its coasts alone but in the recognition 
that the borders of it are the shores which 
delimit the sea or ocean in the midst of 
which lies that island Power. 

As the Monroe doctrine brings the 
United States into the concerns of the 
European family of nations, so its defence 
brought that country to desire the balance 
of powers in the Far East, and emphasised 
the necessity of American control of the 
Pacific Ocean. The events affecting the 

250 




AZO RES 

a ° 










-^aAv/. 




A«ceMcioM 



iTHttfeNAO 



/.-iJr 



JXA/>v7wc;/:re 




MAP OF AMERICA 



American Problems 

balance of powers In Europe are equally 
a matter of concern to America, not neces- 
sarily an Interest In any particular group 
or changes of combinations, but only, that 
there shall be equilibrium. The fact that 
Africa is entirely laid out as a field of co- 
lonial expansion and Its various regions the 
subject of contest between the European 
Powers, caused the United States under the 
necessity of carefully watching the shift- 
ing of political weights and measures 
among them to take part In the conferences 
dealing with the problems of African col- 
onisation. 

The United States conceived and 
enounced the Monroe doctrine to avoid 
being drawn by the nearness of the borders 
of European States Into their tangle of con- 
flicting politics. It was to avoid war and 
to prevent European Intermeddling In 
American affairs. 

From having at Its Inception aimed only 
at defence, it grew with American develop- 

251 



The Orient Question 

ment to be an expression of Imperialism, 
especially in regard to the American con- 
tinents. 

This doctrine was born of the situation 
at the close of the wars of American In- 
dependence, including that of 1812, and 
the formation of an American State and 
national unit, and the conditions resulting 
from the European wars of the Napoleonic 
period, affecting Spain's relations with her 
American colonies, and the absolutely 
dominant position which England had 
gained and which had given her not only 
political supremacy in European and 
world's affairs, but had made her the manu- 
facturer, the carrier on the oceans and 
seas and the Merchant of the world. 

The revolt of the Spanish colonies In 
Central and South America and their dec- 
laration of independence suited Great 
Britain well, as they became henceforth the 
clients of England, their great natural 
riches fell per se Into the scope of Eng- 
lish trade and carrying monopoly, which 

252 



American Problems 

by the re-establishment of Spanish rule in 
those lands would have been diminished, 
by reason of the Spanish tariff-wall and 
Spanish trading monopolies. All that 
England had gained and for which she had 
striven during centuries, expending mil- 
lions of pounds sterling in subsidies during 
the Napoleonic and Revolutionary wars 
to the various governments of Europe to 
finance their armies against France would 
have been undone. 

It must not be forgotten that during 
the eighteenth century Spain was the 
constant ally of France against England, 
and England strove with Spain for the 
Spanish markets and colonial privileges 
which she finally obtained when the Spanish 
colonies declared their independence. 
Every one of the liberators of South and 
Central America found his banker in Lon- 
don, and English mercenary troops were 
to be found on the battle-fields of Mexico, 
Chile, Argentine, Colombia, Peru, Vene- 
zuela, etc. 

253 



The Orient Question 

The decisions of the European Gov- 
ernments, to enforce by militant power the 
submission of those revolted colonies, was 
not to the taste nor the interest of the 
British Cabinet but conditions in Europe 
did not allow Great Britain to openly take 
action in the matter. Furthermore, prior 
to the battle of Austerlitz, the British Gov- 
ernment considered that France's defeat 
would give Great Britain the opportunity 
to regain her lost American colonies, and 
after Austerlitz she attempted to corral 
the new States which Washington had 
erected and bring them through an alliance 
with her into a kind of relation as between 
suzerain and dependent State. That ef- 
fort had failed on the verge of success by 
the bold action of one of the parties in the 
United States in declaring the war of 
1812 against Great Britain.^ 

1 It was John C. Calhoun's policy to consolidate 
American independence, by the war with Great Britain 
in 1812, and the French Minister accredited to Wash- 
ington at the time with special instructions to direct 
his efforts toward preventing a fusion between the 

254 



American Problems 

The fear of entanglement in European 
matters, and the fear of European med- 
dling in American affairs, which might en- 
danger the independence of the United 
States, caused certain American Statesmen 
like Calhoun to look upon the decisions of 
the European Powers at the Verona Con- 
gress relative to the South American Re- 
publics, as precedents which might be ap- 
plied against the United States. That 
mistrust was not entirely distasteful to 
British Statesmen as It furnished the ele- 
ments of a situation where, by a friendly 
attitude England could appear as the espe- 
cial friend of the United States as against 
a designing Europe. 

The British Minister of the Crown, 
Canning, suggested to the American Min- 
ister, Rush, at London, and, through him 
to the Cabinet at Washington, that Great 

United States and Great Britain was Comte Louis 
Serurier, whose uncle was the famous Marechal de 
France of the same name, and whose father was an 
officer commanding French troops in the American war, 
of Independence. 



The Orient Question 

Britain should join the American action 
for the protection of the revolted Spanish 
Colonies against intended European repres- 
sion.^ 

In a message to Congress, President 
Monroe, December 2, 1823, included the 
enunciation of the famous doctrine which 
afterwards bore his name. 

The doctrine, which some consider a 
unilateral treaty, acknowledged tacitly only 
by the other nations, is not a treaty but — 
the principle of a policy. 

At the moment of its enunciation by 
President Monroe the American fleet, es- 
pecially in view of the proximity of its base 
to the scenes of eventual operations, was 
of some account. The British were su- 
preme on the seas; the French and Spanish 
fleet, so soon after the Napoleonic wars, 
were not of the size nor strength to at- 
tempt any expedition, which could be op- 
posed by the United States and regarded 

1 See letter of Jefferson to Madison October 2, 1823, 
and diary of John Quincy Adams, November 13, 1823. 

256 



American Problems 

with disfavor by the British Cabinet. The 
Russian fleet was held in Europe by the 
development of Turkish affairs arising 
out of the divergencies in the interpreta- 
tion of the treaty of Bucharest of 1812, 
and its execution demanded by Russia from 
Turkey. 

No European intervention in Spanish 
America was expedient and Spain rec- 
ognised the independence of the former 
colonies. 

It is ordinarily believed that the Mon- 
roe doctrine was responsible for the im- 
munity of the South and Central American 
Republics from foreign aggression, but 
other causes contributed largely to that re- 
sult. Adjustment of the European politi- 
cal conditions; the inadequacy of transport 
and communication across the Atlantic ; the 
undeveloped foreign industrial demand for 
natural resources; the naval supremacy of 
England, and her position as the chief car- 
rier and trader; and the seclusion of Ja- 
pan. 

257 



The Orient Question 

It is a curious fact of coincidence that 
up to the eighties the Monroe doctrine, 
was only enforced when it was to Eng- 
land's interest to see it enforced, as in the 
case of forcing Russia back from the Pa- 
cific, the French expedition to Mexico, and 
the Spanish-American war when England 
imposed neutrality on Europe. 

As applicable to herself, England con- 
sidered the Monroe doctrine as non-exist- 
ent, witness, the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, 
which infers that hypothesis, recognising 
that England has rights of acquirement on 
the American continent. 

The history of that treaty and the Inci- 
dents of Its negotiations, make evident that 
whatever Great Britain's claims were as to 
the right of extending her sovereignty over 
Central American territory — based on old 
pretensions never valid and never admitted 
by Spain, — " election reasons " Involving 
Interests of party-politics In America at 
the time of the negotiations, were the true 

258 



American Problems 

reasons for the acceptance of the English 
draft, which, in spirit, was a controversion 
of the Monroe doctrine. 

Only in the eighties, President Hayes in 
a pronouncement concerning the French- 
Panama-Canal enterprise, began to define 
somewhat more clearly the scope of the 
doctrine; Cleveland's ultimatum to Great 
Britain on the Orinoco question set it on 
a firm basis and patched the rents made 
in it by the Clayton-Bulwer treaty; the 
Spanish-American war, some years later, 
was the triumph of that doctrine, and the 
acquisition of the Canal-territory and build- 
ing of the Canal by the United States, its 
logic results. 

The Hay-Pauncefote treaty, replacing 
the Clayton-Bulwer document, still, by 
ambiguity of formulation, admits of inter- 
pretation in the interest of Great Britain 
not only contrary to the spirit of the Mon- 
roe doctrine but which by extension would 
negate the sovereign rights of the United 

259 



The Orient Question 

States concerning her interior fiscal legis- 
lation, — as witness, the coast-wise ship- 
ping controversy. 

The Monroe doctrine has only received 
tacit recognition by the Powers, and the at- 
titude of the Central and South American 
States is that they are too weak to op- 
pose it. 

The five Bolivian Republics of Vene- 
zuela, Colombia, Peru, Equador and Bo- 
livia, were forced to submit when the Wash- 
ington State department put its veto to the 
formation of the so-called " Union Bo- 
liviana " — a defensive and offensive al- 
liance which those States attempted to 
form and proclaim on the occasion of the 
celebration of their independence in 191 1. 
Such an alliance would have borne heavily 
on the situations between the United States 
and Colombia concerning the Republic of 
Panama and its independence. Similarly, 
the policy of the United States was, and 
is, contrary to the effective union of the 
Central American Republics, — the Court 

260 



American Problems 

of Arbitration invented by Secretary Root 
was a kind of palliative against that move- 
ment and the interference of the United 
States in the interior affairs of these Re- 
publics has always favoured that President 
or Government who represented Separat- 
ism as against Federation. That policy of 
the United States is logical and is condi- 
tioned by the possession of the Panama 
Canal, and the exigencies of its local de- 
fences. 

The South American States, especially 
Chile, Argentina and Brazil are unwilling 
to recognise the United States as holder of 
a mandate to defend the interests of Latin 
America; though they recognise well the 
good of its basic principle, they are loath 
to intrust the United States solely with the 
safe-guard of that principle. Those South 
American States possess increasingly strong 
military and naval organisations adequate 
for the defence of their own territories. 
Those States have more trade, banking 
and other relations with Europe than with 

261 



The Orient Question 

the United States, and do not relish any 
theory which would appear to assume eco- 
nomic and political hegemony by the United 
States over Latin American Republics, es- 
pecially in view of the fact that they them- 
selves are, militarily, qualified to enforce 
that doctrine in the American continent 
south of Panama. 

The enormous economic development of 
Europe, demanding raw-products and mar- 
kets for its industries, have made South 
America a field for European commercial 
exploitation and investment.^ 

These conditions of international com- 
mercial rivalry, emphasised by recent pre- 
tensions to economic preference for the 
United States in the Continents of the 
Americas and destined to be intensified by 
the monopolising tendencies of Japanese 
economical developments in the Far East, 

1 In this connection the project of the Morocco-Dakar 
Railroad, connected in the north with the Spanish and 
European railroad systems, and from Dakar in the 
south with the Brazilian Harbour of Pernambuco by 
fast Steamers, is interesting to note. 

262 



American Problems 

must ultimately test the Monroe doctrine 
to the utmost. 

The enforcement of that doctrine exacts 
command of the Atlantic coasts of both 
North and South America, of the Carib- 
bean Sea, the West coast of the Americas 
and the Pacific Ocean. 

The centre of that radius is the Panama 
Canal, the most important and the weakest 
point of the United States coast lines. 

The national defence of the United 
States imposes upon that country the char- 
acteristics inherent to an island power 
whose defence is a fleet, to be backed by 
a strong army, making that fleet not a de- 
fence of territory alone, but the fleet must 
be able to act purely as a fleet on the high 
seas, in the sense of the blue water school, 
and not as a harbour police force or float- 
ing coast fortresses. 



263 



CHAPTER V 

EUROPEAN PROBLEMS OF INTER- 
NATIONAL IMPORTANCE 

A. THE ANGLO-GERMAN SITUATION. 

' ' D EWARE ! the sea threatens while 
JL3 it serves you, it bears you, but 
it environs you. The position of this is- 
land is such that there is no via media for 
her between being all powerful and be- 
ing nothing at all. This is why she al- 
ways was conquered until having sub- 
jugated the sea she in turn became 
mistress of the world. England will be 
the sea's victim the day she ceases to be 
its Queen." In these words the British 
Member of Parliament, Mr. Urquhart, 
characterised England's needs and condi- 
tions. 

An Island State, it flanks the west coast 
264 



European Problems 

of Europe — It was subject of conquest 
from the continent until it recognised that 
its defence did not lie on the shores of the 
island but that the opposite continental 
shores are its walls. That the sea between 
these shores and Its own home-coast must 
be Its exclusive domain, and so long as 
the opposite shore is her border she is safe. 

This situation made it a necessity for 
England to fight every nation on the Euro- 
pean continent which developed its naval 
resources. Spain, Portugal, Holland and 
France were successively the enemies of 
England, and out of the wreckage of the 
colonial possessions of those States, Eng- 
land built up her empire encircling the 
globe. 

The hundreds of years of warfare, which 
by the beginning of the nineteenth century 
made England the supreme power, were 
fought In Europe and less by England 
than by the European powers, which were 
England's allies. The more the nations of 
Europe fought among themselves, the 

265 



The Orient Question 

greater became the power of England. 
The battle-fields were Germany and Italy. 
The principal combatants were France — 
the Bourbons, — and the Hapsburgs. 

Cromwell inaugurated the policy of in- 
tervening in the European struggles, either 
actively or by participation, or by granting 
subsidies, but always so as to be the power 
able to turn the scales. That policy was 
to limit the political and territorial expan- 
sion of any of the European States, and 
not to allow any one State to secure such 
a degree of power as to remain unaffected 
by any coalition including England. 

After more than two hundred years of 
wars in Europe, France, England's foe, 
was finally beaten and out of the field. 
England emerged from the period of the 
Napoleonic wars with the mastery of the 
seas and the hegemony of Europe. Ger- 
many was disrupted, the same was true of 
Italy. 

The political conditions in Europe were 
such that no one of the powers was strong 

266 



European Problems 

enough to menace England's domination, 
it was she who gave the law to Europe and 
shaped the destinies of its innumerable 
States. 

The policies and trend of ideas in Eu- 
rope were against all liberal thought; Met- 
ternich's system of absolutism was im- 
posed as the proper form of Government; 
the wars of the French revolution, had 
destroyed the existing industries; the gen- 
eral police system of government was not 
favourable to any economic development, 
— England was the manufacturer, the im- 
porter and exporter, — the merchant of 
Europe with no competitor in industry, 
commerce or trade. 

Although watching France, her old 
enemy, she then began to observe Russia 
in whose moves she saw danger to her 
possession of India. Throughout the 
whole of the nineteenth century England 
was hypnotised by Russia's progress in the 
East. Her eyes were constantly gazing 
at the Bosporus and Suez. The liberal 

267 



The Orient Question 

movements in Europe found platonic sup- 
port in England — so long as they were in 
the direction of weakening the strength of 
the different States. The movement of 
" nationalities," whose open advocate was 
France under the Third Napoleon, was 
not regarded with favour in England, and 
her policy would have perhaps taken a 
more decided stand against that move- 
ment, if, in her constant preoccupation for 
India's safety and means to check Russia, 
she had not stood in need of a continental 
ally. That ally was France, who in turn, 
after having sought to approach Russia 
under the Restauration, desiring to find a 
partner able to aid her in regaining the 
prestige lost at the end of the Napoleonic 
wars, — had under the Third Napoleon 
with the same end in view, taken a strong 
anti-Russian stand. 

The war of the Crimea gave to France 
the satisfaction of tearing up the treaty of 
Vienna and to England the illusion of hav- 

268 



European Problems 

ing curbed Russia and eliminated that 
power from the Black Sea. Russia was 
no more in the Mediterranean. The 
Crimea also allowed Sardinia, the ally of 
France and England to come forward and 
make ready for the task she had set her- 
self of erecting a united Italy. Prussia, 
too, was slowly in her turn preparing for 
the work of blood and iron wrought by 
Bismark, a united Germany. 

The Franco-Sardo-Austrian war, with its 
resultant defeat for Austria, made it possi- 
ble for Sardinia — Piedmont — to head 
the national unifying movement and by 
1 86 1, some eighteen months later, United 
Italy was born, — to the displeasure of 
France. England, sympathetic to that 
new formation, when its success became 
imminent, saw in it a counter-balance to 
France. 

This Italy, re-incarnate, a new power in 
the Mediterranean, changed the status 
quo in Europe making a breach in the 

269 



The Orient Question 

fundamental conditions of the continent, 
which had given England the casting vote 
among the nations. 

When, on the i8th of January, 1701, the 
first Prussian King was crowned, the for- 
mer Elector of Brandenburg, assuming that 
royal title, the General, Statesman and 
Councillor to the Hapsburg Emperor, 
Prince Eugene of Savoy, said that the worst 
blunder ever made by the Hapsburgs was 
to recognise the Elector of Brandenburg 
as King of Prussia. Soon afterward, un- 
der Frederick the Great, Prussia assumed 
a leading position not only in Germany but 
became of importance in the affairs of Eu- 
rope. In opposition to the Hapsburg 
there was the Hohenzollern in Germany. 
The Napoleonic wars, the final defeat of 
Napoleon and Prussia's part in it aug- 
mented the prestige of that State. 

In the so-called " Wars of liberation " 
(Befreiungs-kriege) against the French, 
constituting the new German movement, 

270 



European ProbleiUs 

Prussia took the lead. The ideal was a 
great Germany, led by Prussia, organ- 
ised and strong, and in 1848 the liberal 
idealistic German Parliament, assembled 
at Frankfurt, offered to the King of 
Prussia the Imperial Crown of Ger- 
many, which he then refused. But the 
question had come forward for answer, — 
a great Germany under Hapsburg, or a 
Germany under Hohenzollern? 

The Zoll-verein under the Initiative of 
Prussia, drew Into Its membership by de- 
grees nearly all the small German States 
with the exception of Austria. It was In 
1854, that this question of the admittance 
of Austria into the German Zoll-verein 
was first posed by Austria. The Austrian 
defeat In Italy (1859), ^^^ the subsequent 
making of modern Italy, Indicated to the 
Hohenzollern ruler that the time was near 
for Prussia to assert her leadership In Ger- 
many. With the accession of King Wil- 
liam and his calling of Bismark to his coun- 
cil, Prussia, militarily and politically, was 

271 



The Orient Question 

rapidly made fit for the task which those 
two men, a great King, later, Emperor 
and his still greater councillor, had set be- 
fore her. 

Up to that time Germany had been for 
centuries the battle-field of Europe, her 
interior affairs or better said, the affairs 
between the various small German States, 
were the concern of everybody outside of 
Germany even more than of the German 
people. England, France, the Hapsburg, 
every one had his word to say, of " allow- 
ing " and " permitting "; It was the strug- 
gle for survival of the German nation. 
And as Cavour and Victor Emanuel had 
carried Piedmont to a victorious end In 
Italy's battle for life, so William and BIs- 
mark saw that It was Prussia's duty to the 
German nation to create the German Em- 
pire. 

The quesion of the Duchies of Schleswig 
and Holstein was the touchstone of the fu- 
ture. The war against Denmark In 1864, 
the elimination of the other European 

272 



European Problems 

powers, France and England especially, 
from any decision in that matter by form- 
ing the condominium of Prussia and Aus- 
tria in the Duchies, was the first step of 
Bismark's triumph in the sense of Ger- 
man self-assertion. The military prepar- 
edness of Prussia, supported by Austria, 
coupled with English military unprepared- 
ness just after the Indian mutiny, and 
France, fully occupied with her Mexican 
adventure, cleared the way for Prussia to 
become the master of the situation. This 
was a second and graver shock to English 
policy, another and stouter blow at the 
mainstays of British dominance in Europe. 
The subsequent Austro-Italian-Prussian 
war, which was the natural and expected 
consequence drawn by Bismark from the 
condominium of the Duchies ending in 
Austrian expulsion from Germany; the 
formation of the North-German Confed- 
eration under Prussia's lead and the mili- 
tary conventions between that new confed- 
eration and the south German States, 

273 



The Orient Question 

forced upon them by Bismark accomplished 
by successive steps the exclusion of outside 
Interference in interior German affairs and 
laid the foundations of the Empire. 

The defeat of Austria at Sadowa, as it 
was said In the French chamber — *'was 
the defeat of France" — it was, too, the 
loss of the day to Great Britain, new con- 
ditions had arisen ominous for the future. 
For France, the rise of Germany was of 
grave import. The old fight between the 
western and the eastern parts of the 
Charlemagne empire was revived. 

As a result of the Franco-German war 
the German Empire — finally formulated, 
rose out of the ruins of France.^ 

1 It is well sometimes to recall the origins in that 
far past of this old question of the Rhine forming still 
to-day as it has in various guises during near onto a 
thousand years, a cause of bitter dispute and tension 
between nations, and the bases of its present status. 
It was created by the treaty of Verdun when the Em- 
pire of Charlemagne was separated into three parts — 
the western — France, — the eastern — Germany, and 
a center one called after its recipient Lothar, Loth- 
aringen and comprising the Rhine-lands, (Holland, 

274 



European Problems 

The new Germanic power, possessing all 
the brute force and energy of a young na- 
tion and determined to be the undisputed 
master In her own house and the arbiter 
of her own future began to challenge the 
right of her neighbour, England, to control 
the German Seas. 

Germany, new made, did not arouse in 

Belgium, Alsace, Lorraine and including Italy). In 
the Middle-ages Alsace-Lorraine as well as Holland 
made part of the German State. During all the cen- 
turies of fight between Guelf and Ghibelline, the party 
opposing the central authority and the unity of the 
German State always found its ally in France. With 
the accession of the Hapsburgs to the Imperial throne 
and their extension of power over Spain, France en- 
tered the struggle against them and supported the 
Reformation movement in Germany. The oppression 
of the Germans by the Hapsburg Emperor Charles V. ; 
his attempt to suppress protestantism and enforce 
Catholicism in Germany by military means drove the 
German princes headed at that time by two Hohen- 
zollerns, John and Adalbert, of Brandenburg, to ask 
protection of the French Crown. Henry II. accepted 
the title offered to him of " defender of German Free- 
dom " and with the consent of the German princes 
French troops entered into possession of several of the 
fortified towns of Lorraine. In the thirty years war, 
which was begun by the attempt of Bohemia to over- 

275 



The Orient Question 

Great Britain the attention merited by so 
portentous an advent. The gaze of Eng- 
land fixed upon the affairs of India 
especially in regard to defence against Rus- 

throw and expulse her Hapsburg ruler, France and 
Sweden were the supporters of the antagonists of 
Hapsburgs in Germany. By the treaty of Westphalen 
closing that war, France was in possession of Alsace: 
the power and ambition of the Hapsburg for mondial 
rule and the absorption of Germany was broken. 
French influence was established in German lands. A 
hundred years later Lorraine passed into French hands 
— by the marriage of Francis of Lorraine to Maria 
Theresa of Hapsburg and the cession of Lorraine to 
Stanislaus Lescinsky, father-in-law of Louis XV. upon 
whose death it fell to France. 

This " France Rhenane " weighed heavily on the af- 
fairs in Germany. Germany was in three parts — 
the Austrian or Hapsburg part, the Prussian, the 
Hohenzollern part, and the rest, an agglomeration of 
small States, puppets in the hands of the neighbour- 
ing outside powers. 

Alsace-Lorraine was the " knee under which France 
held Germany down." On one side France, on the 
other the Hapsburg whip, Germany was forced to 
look to Prussia. The expulsion of Austria and the 
formation of the North-German confederation were 
matters of life and death to new Germany, means of 
lifting that knee of France from its throat, which was 
accomplished by the Franco-German war, resulting in 
the German Empire. 

276 



European Problems _ 

sian advance In Asia prevented her states- 
men from reading the future in the west 
accurately. It was otherwise in Europe: 
France was hypnotised by the ^' troue des 
Vosges"; Austria saw herself In danger 
between two new State formations both 
made at her expense, Italy In the south 
and Germany In the north. In 1871, 
Beust, the Austrian Chancellor said that 
an entente between Austria and Germany 
would be necessary for the preservation of 
Austria — he did not say " Austria " but 
*' European Peace." Austria attempted 
then, as she attempts to-day, to reconstruct 
herself on a federal basis, aimed at en- 
globing several of the Slavonic Independent 
States which are the cultural centres of 
fragments of nationalities at present within 
her borders. 

Germany herself, not yet strong, had to 
be guided safely through the many rocks 
and shoals of possible European combina- 
tions against her. Bismark, seeking to 
avoid any possible great European war 

277 



The Orient Question 

into which Germany could be drawn, en- 
tered first the " Entente of three Em- 
perors," Germany, Russia, Austria and 
after the Congress of Berlin, in which Rus- 
sia was humbled by England, Austria and 
France, and during which Bismark, as the 
" honest " broker, had earned Russia's 
enmity, Germany was forced into the 
Triple Alliance — Germany, Austria, 
Italy — a coldly political and artificial 
partnership without any natural basis, as all 
the elements, vital forces and foreign in- 
terests of each of these three powers are 
in antagonism. 

The only one of these powers to obtain 
permanent and sound advantage from that 
alliance is Austria, and while it served 
Germany's purpose in its day, it is at pres- 
ent a drag on the development of that 
Empire. 

Although England was slow to realize 
the magnitude of the menace to her su- 
premacy raised up by the creation of a 
United Germany, and although she no 

278; 



European Problems 

longer holds the balance of influence on the 
continent, the inherent weakness of the 
Triple Alliance, so long as it includes Aus- 
tria, provides Great Britain with the op- 
portunities — if advised in time — to set 
her house in order and still preserve what 
remains to her of her old supremacy. The 
inadequacy of the English land-forces, 
placing the burden of the defence of the 
British Isles on the fleet, cripples that part 
of the militant forces upon which the Em- 
pire reposes. 

The changes wrought by Germany in 
Europe need not have been a danger to 
England had they not been followed by 
an enormous outburst of energy in all fields 
of human effort and her taking to the sea 
or as Bismark put it " cousin land-rat's 
taking it into his head to turn water- 
rat." Lockroy, former French Minis- 
ter of Marine, in his " Lettres sur la Ma- 
rine Allemande " says: — ''Germany will 
be a great naval power in spite of her geo- 
graphical position and history, her claims 

279 



The Orient Question 

to rule the waves will bring on war with 
Great Britain sooner or later, — that war 
will be one of the most terrible conflicts of 
the twentieth century." 

Chatham said: *' England's only fear 
here below is that France should become a 
naval, commercial and colonial power." 
What Chatham feared from France has, 
within the span of four decades, been re- 
alized by Germany. Still, in the seventies 
and eighties England with the monopoly 
of manufacturing industries, of engineer- 
ing, of commerce, of banking and of ship- 
ping, seemed secure against any possible 
challenge, least of all would it have oc- 
curred to the English to be put in question 
by Germany, a group of States but just 
emerged from a state of troubled dream 
and formed into a conscious nation, which 
by geographical position, physical features, 
climate, agricultural soil, and mineral 
wealth was greatly inferior to England, 
and which, moreover, had in thirties of the 
nineteenth century asked English engi- 

280 



European Problems 

neers to come and show Germans how to 
set up manufacturing plants and how to 
work the weaving looms, which prior to 
the Unification had slowly grown up but 
languished without any strength or im- 
pulse. 

The home-coming of the German nation 
flushed by victory on the battle-field 
brought an awakened consciousness of 
force into the peaceful activities of the life 
of the nation. As the Prussian school- 
master helped win the battles of Sadowa, 
Metz and Sedan, so the school-master 
brought all the questions of life into touch 
with scientific training. German schools 
made the German skilled in commerce and 
trade, and in all the branches of manu- 
facture. In school the workman obtained 
the major part of his apprentice-ship and 
it was the University-trained chemist or 
engineer who became, and is to-day, the 
stone upon which the factories repose. 
These engineers and chemists are men of 
science, qualified to occupy a chair at any 

281 



The Orient Question 

University. The laboratories in the fac- 
tories and manufacturing establishments 
always in the van of scientific research each 
In its branch are often finer and better 
equipped than many a laboratory in the 
Universities. It was this application of 
discipline and science thought by the army, 
which had given them the victory that now 
applied to industry and daily life, turned 
that giant over night into a conqueror in 
the fields of peaceful labour and commerce. 
Where, in England and elsewhere, the rule 
of the thumb still prevails, where actual 
manual apprentice-ship was preferred to 
school-learning, the German, even the 
ordinary labourer, is often a skilled work- 
man by reason of his school-training. 

This thoroughness of trained capacities, 
has made Germany the most formidable 
and most dangerous rival of Great Britain 
on sea and on land. The Teuton is already 
encroaching more and more on what is 
considered, or has been considered as Eng- 
land's exclusive political and economic pre- 

282 



European Problems 

serves. The situation between the two 
rivals resolves itself more and more into 
the question : — Will Germany succeed in 
driving England to the wall, by force of 
study and patient application to industry 
and gradual mastery of the world's com- 
merce or will she consummate that result 
by force of arms? 

In any study of the Anglo-German rela- 
tions, account must be taken of the differ- 
ing conceptions of the two nationalities 
concerning the position of the State and its 
duties towards the citizens. 

The Germans hold that their conception 
of the function of the State has been one of 
the chief causes if not the principal source 
of its success. The British watchword is 
individualism, free-exchange, non-interfer- 
ence, or as Bagshot said: — "the natural 
impulse of the English is to resist author- 
ity .. . we look on State-action not as 
our own action but as an alien action, as an 
Imposed tyranny from without, not as the 

283 



The Orient Question 

consummated result of our organised 
wishes." In Germany, Nation and State, 
and State and society are practically one, 
acting in political and economical matters 
as a unit. Where, in England the Gov- 
ernment has no initiative and no influence 
on the industries, transport-facilities, etc., 
in Germany, it was the State who took the 
initiative, fighting against inertia and con- 
servatism of the people, and all the meas- 
ures of legislation which gave Germany 
her skilled labour, workman insurance, 
workman school acts, etc., transportation 
by land and water, were the initiative acts 
of the government. 

The economic war has raged hotly for 
more than a decade. Both nations are 
convinced that the trade-interests of the 
one cannot live side by side with those of 
the other. Their commerce cannot re- 
main in competition, neither can they com- 
bine, one must be supreme and the other 
subordinated. German commerce is gain- 

284 



European Problems 

Ing everywhere, her Industries expand, and 
her manufactured articles gradually invade 
the markets of the world; British commerce 
and industries are being slowly pushed out 
of the field. In Germany, unemployment 
is an exception; in England, it has become 
the chronic condition, all along the line 
increasing success has been on the side of 
Germany during this war-in-peace. Act- 
ual military warfare would not in principle 
be a break in conditions it would be only 
the continuation of an already existing 
state of hostilities. 

England, leaving her *' splendid isola- 
tion " has veered around to her former ad- 
versaries, France and Russia, and for the 
time being, the Triple-entente, counter- 
balancing the Triple-alliance has been the 
keeper of the peace in Europe. 

But both combinations possess many 
elements of artificiality which cause them 
on several points to increasingly fail of 
their purpose. For instance, Germany at 

285 



The Orient Question 

the present moment finds the value of Aus- 
tria so deteriorated that she is forced to 
increase the already heavy burden of her 
armaments; and in the camp of the Triple- 
entente dissatisfaction is expressed in 
France because of England's inadequacy 
of army. Again, England's approach to 
Russia is on a basis of some common po- 
litical interests and mutual concessions, but 
in fact, England reducing to a minimum 
what she holds to be the necessary require- 
ments for her defence of India, could never 
afford to concede what Russia would ask 
for as the minimum of her necessities. 

England's most advantageous policy 
has returned to the principle that guided it 
during the eighteenth century, resulting 
in such imperial trophy, that is to fight the 
cocks of Europe against one another wher- 
ever the cock-pit chances to be. And as 
the Hapsburgs fought England's battles 
in the past centuries, so again, Austria is 
the most useful country of Europe to Eng- 
land's scheme. 

286 



European Problems 

So, too, the Balkan Allies went to Eng- 
land to be despoiled of part of the lands 
and liberties for their co-nationals which 
they had earned on the battle-fields in fair 
and hard-won fight. 

The value of the Hapsburg to England 
arises not only from the peculiar situation 
of Austria in regard to Germany but be- 
cause Austria herself exists solely by creat- 
ing, fostering and exploiting rivalries and 
strifes between nations, and can always 
turn to her own advantage any war not 
waged against the Hapsburg dominions. 

Slav and German are destined to live 
side by side and on the basis of that geo- 
graphical fact, in some intelligent age — 
when Germany shall have seen the fal- 
lacy of supporting feudal conceptions, and 
completed German nation-making in Eu- 
rope, a stable working-agreement insuring 
peace will be arrived at by those two in- 
evitable neighbours between whom war 
would be extremely costly without any kind 
of compensation. 

287 



The Orient Question 

Germany has formulated her imperial 
needs as — an extended coast-line, mouth 
of the Shelde and Rhine, with the Dutch 
possessions in the Far Seas, and colonies. 
France possesses such colonies, but those 
of England are more desirable still, and 
she it is who stands watch over the Nether- 
lands. 

Germany, a continental power, con- 
nected by land frontiers with other coun- 
tries, would receive a set back from a de- 
feat by Great Britain, and her commerce 
and industries would suffer but the harm 
would not be irreparable. A German vic- 
tory would threaten the very existence of 
the British Empire, which would lose to 
the Teuton, colonies and naval stations, 
while the English industries and commerce 
would receive a death-stroke. 

The out-come of that eventual conflict 
cannot fail to be portentous for the whole 
earth. 



288 



European Problems 

B. THE HAPSBURG PROBLEM. 

Austria-Hungary is a conglomeration of 
conquests of territories and bits of ter- 
ritory inhabited by fragments of nations 
whose racial and national centres with but 
two exceptions, lie outside of Austro-Hun- 
garian borders in neighbouring States on 
East, West, North and South. 

This conglomeration of peoples and 
lands without common interests is ruled by 
and for the sole benefit of one family, the 
Hapsburg dynasty, whose motto is : — 
" plus ultra " and '^ Austria Est Imperare 
Orbi Universo " (Austria has the right to 
rule the whole Universe) and whose policy 
always was : '* divide et impera." 

The Hapsburg rulers ruined Spain and 
sucked it dry of blood and treasure, not 
for the building up or aggrandizement of 
that country, but in order to seize Ger- 
many and impose Hapsburg despotism 
upon the whole world : — it was in the un- 

289 



The Orient Question 

ceasing effort to realize their device that a 
Hapsburg despatched the Armada to the 
subjugation of the British Isles — to be 
perhaps remembered by England when 
Hapsburg again sends another Armada to 
Suez. The Swiss in time of William Tell 
had rebelled from the Hapsburg principle 
of the enslavement and exploitation of peo- 
ples for the still greater augmentation of 
Hapsburg riches and domination; it was 
only when the Netherlands had freed 
themselves from the Hapsburg tyranny that 
they were able to rise to greatness as a na- 
tion; the thirty years war began when Bo- 
hemia attempted in 1618, to expel the for- 
eign Hapsburg : — that struggle which 
wrecked the Tcheque State and completely 
exhausted the life-forces of that land — 
then one of the richest and most civilised 
of all Europe — goes on still to-day, un- 
quenched by the bloodshed of centuries. 
Since the battle of Mohacs Hungary has; 
wrestled, without pause in combat, with 
Austria, striving for national liberty, and 

290 




Map Showing Distribution of the Different Races in Austria-Hungary and the Balkans 



European Problems 

even throwing herself at one moment Into 
the arms of the Turk in effort to wrench 
herself free of the Hapsburg grip. In- 
tolerable Hapsburg exactions drove the 
Germans to hail a French King " as de- 
fender of German liberties "; Italy, though 
she was able to tear herself free from the 
Hawks will still need many a day before 
she can replenish the land they preyed 
upon; it was only when the German prin- 
cipalities, duchies and kingdoms under 
Prussia's lead expulsed the Hapsburgs that 
they were able to come together in the or- 
ganised and corporate life of a modern 
State and build German greatness from 
within. 

Not only in these gigantic struggles for 
freedom of the different nations, but in 
almost every other war in Europe the 
cause direct or indirect lay In the Haps- 
burg determination, against the laws of na- 
ture and the will of races, to conquer all 
countries and bind them to tribute of blood 
and gold. 

291 



The Orient Question 

By her Dual organisation constitution- 
ally, two minorities the Germans In Aus- 
tria and the Magyars In Hungary are 
enabled to rule and dominate all the other 
races. This abnormal political situation 
is aggravated by an equally unsound state 
of affairs In matters economic, causing a 
general sense of insecurity In which the 
economic grievances of the people become 
Identified with their various mutual na- 
tional mistrusts and hatreds. 

The Hapsburg lands are rich In soil 
and In mineral deposits and favourably sit- 
uated In every way for the development of 
prosperity. 

Up to half a century ago Austria-Hun- 
gary had been chiefly agricultural, though 
already ridden with great feudal estates. 
With brusque suddenness at that time, a 
wave of Industrialism excited by the great 
fortunes yielded from Industries in Eng- 
land and France, swept over Austria-Hun- 
gary; whole countries were artificially 
thrown Into Industrial development not in 

29a 



European Problems 

response to an overflow of population but 
by the great landed proprietors who had 
already begun to work their estates com- 
mercially. In England and elsewhere sur- 
plus population had made manufacture 
and industries a logical growth if not a 
necessity, but in Austria-Hungary there 
was no surplus population and industrial 
cheap labor was created by pauperising 
the small farmer classes. The Austrian 
wage-scales of labour are those of the 
sweat-shop, with its corollaries of igno- 
rance, vice and crime, witness the statistics 
of births showing the percentage of illegiti- 
macy of the whole to be: 23.5 per cent, in 
Lower Austria ranging to 39.4 per cent 
in the Austrian Crownland of Carinthia. 
The vast landed estates increase in num- 
bers and augment in extent, absorbing the 
lands which formerly gave homes to hun- 
dreds of thousands of small farm owners. 
To-day, Austria-Hungary furnishes the 
spectacle to the world of a yearly emigra- 
tion of over half-a-milllon [one million in 

293 



The Orient Question 

19 1 2 according to recently published 
Vienna statistics] of unhappy human be- 
ings abandoning the lands of their birth 
in quest of a more tolerable existence in 
far countries. 

Austria-Hungary, freighted with feudal- 
istic traditions and ideas, is to-day, par ex- 
cellence, — and solely among modern States 
— the survival of the mediseval conception 
of a State as being a dynasty and its pos- 
sessions, in opposition to the natural and 
present day acceptation of a State as be- 
ing the expression of a national will and 
entity. 

The methods of aggrandisement or em- 
pire-building of that mediaeval concept, as 
contradistinct from the modern plan of 
colonising and civilising empty or quasi- 
empty lands, inhabited by savage or unde- 
veloped races, — was, to over-run adjoin- 
ing civilized countries of different races 
with huge devastating armies aimed at the 
national destruction of those countries and 

294 



European Problems 

the forcible annexation of their territories 
by the conqueror, whose task thenceforth, 
was the obliteration of language and creed 
with up-rooting of native traditions, insti- 
tutions and personality, and the levying of 
taxes and soldiers for further conquests. 
Because of this anachronism and all it 
involves, Austria-Hungary is in itself, a 
problem fraught with danger to the peace 
of Europe. 

The Hapsburg possessions, spoils of 
conquests at one time or another, include 
four and a half million Poles in the north, 
over four million Russians in the north- 
east, three and a half milhon Rumanians 
in the east, six and a quarter million 
Serbo-Croats and Slovenes in the eastern 
part of the south, about eight hundred 
thousand Italians in the western districts 
in the south and about ten million Ger- 
mans in the west. 

Each of these national groups is a 
fragment of an adjoining mother-nation, 

295 



The Orient Question 

whose blood is in its veins, whose language 
it speaks and which is its cultural centre. 
All of these fragments belong to dif- 
ferent nations. All of these fragmentary 
groups have been lopped-off from the 
parent nation by the sword and not by any 
geographical barrier. 

Amid all the Hapsburg possessions, 
two nations alone form complete entities, 
having no co-nationals outside of Austria- 
Hungary. These are the Magyars, num- 
bering nine million In a compact mass oc- 
cupying a natural basin, and eight million 
Tcheko-Slovacks inhabiting a continuous 
strip of mountains and plain. 

This heterogeneous composite of strange 
yoke-fellows are kept in hand by a com- 
plex and ruthless system of pitting them 
one against another, playing off against one 
another national susceptibilities, rousing 
and fanning religious rivalries and ani- 
m.osItIes, using soldiers of one nation to 
oppress and suppress the members of a 
differing race or creed, and by this foster- 

296 



European Problems 

ing of legendary hatreds during centuries 
among the various peoples maintaining a 
working equilibrium in the dominion. 

A system of police served by a network 
of spies closely enmeshing the intimate and 
domestic life of all citizens, — corrupt and 
unimaginable to the world — outside of 
Turkey under Abdul Hamid — further 
complicated by a tyrannous hierarchy of 
patronage bending every department of 
public service or private accomplishment 
to a degrading subserviency. 

These conditions are the logical effects 
of nations held in subjection, for only 
through corruption and vice and the sur- 
render of individual will and pride of in- 
tegrity can nations be held down by a for- 
eign conqueror. 

During the last one hundred years, one 
by one of the fragments of nations within 
the Austro-Hungarian boundaries have 
awakened to self-consciousness and a sense 

297 



The Orient Question 

of their relationship to their parent-na- 
tions across the borders, recognising and 
asserting with increasing definitiveness 
their racial characteristics, they have begun 
to recall to mind and observe the ideals 
and cultural trend of their mother-nations 
and to fall in somewhat with the rhythmic 
beat of home movements. In this age of 
human rights they realise that they did not 
choose, but were chosen ; that they have no 
say as to their own destinies, no free ex- 
pression of their own will. With but 
cramped opportunity for the development 
of their own racial impulses they experi- 
ence a sense akin to captivity, and cease 
to see any hope in the state of separation 
of their lands from the home countries. 
The mother-lands too, are not less con- 
scious of them — standing at the door. 
It seems inevitable that sooner or later 
the door should open. 

The hopes of the Italia irredenta, the 
movement for the re-erection of Poland, 

298 



European Problems 

and the agitation among Austrian Russians 
for re-union with Russia, are well known. 
Less known to the western world and 
less understood, is the situation of the three 
and a half million Rumanians tucked close 
within the curved Rumanian kingdom, like 
a child in the lap of its mother. An oc- 
currence in 1892, serves to illustrate the 
strong desire for national unification of 
those Rumanians of Transylvania in Aus- 
tria-Hungary. In the midst of agitation 
they formulated their demand '^ either for 
self-government " within the Hapsburg 
borders or else for outright annexation 
to their mother-kingdom Rumania. The 
signers of that memorandum were arrested 
and imprisoned. Vienna, employing strong 
measures, was able to crush down the move- 
ment, chiefly owing to the action within 
the Rumanian Kingdom itself of the King 
of Rumania, a foreigner in the land, who, 
indifferent to national aspirations as is apt 
to be the way with a ruler of foreign race, 
suppressed the Rumanian league which 

299 



The Orient Question 

had been formed to work for the liberation 
of their brothers from the Hapsburg yoke. 

It can scarcely be doubted that a na- 
tional ruler in Rumania would not have 
made the recent mistake, agreeable to Aus- 
tria, of demanding of Bulgaria a small and 
unimportant triangle of territory, thus 
arbitrarily turning her back on the inter- 
ests of the several million Rumanians out- 
side of her borders. 

Instead of being led for a petty cause 
into creating an irritation between that 
country and her Bulgarian neighbour, a 
national ruler would have been swift to 
perceive the value of the new Balkan 
powers whose interests on every point are 
identical with her own. 

Of the Balkan Allied States, Bulgaria 
alone, with her new acquisitions, has 
rounded out her borders to include the 
whole of the territory inhabited by her co- 
nationals, and has completed the making 
of the Bulgarian nation. Her gaze must 

300 



European Problems 

henceforth be directed eastward towards 
Asia Minor. 

Greece has yet to make her limits in- 
clude all the Isles and the Greek lands in 
Asia. 

Servia has still to complete her nation- 
making, as even with the recent accrue- 
ment resulting from the liberation of Serb 
territories from the Turk, there yet re- 
mains some forty thousand square miles of 
Serb territory and over six million Serbs 
outside her borders in those provinces of 
the Serb Block which have, from time to 
time, been annexed by Austria-Hungar}', 
either by violent seizure, or as a gift from 
Europe in diplomatic deals, where the fate 
of peoples was subordinated in the coun- 
cils of the great powers, to the convenience 
of providing a price " to boot " in the 
game of give and take. 

The independent Kingdom of Servia 
as it was up to the 17th of last October, 
with a population of barely three million, 

301 



The Orient Question 

and which was with Montenegro the only 
free part of Servian territory, is within 
those Hmits the only country in the world 
with no pauper classes and consequently no 
poor-houses,^ 

Examination of the causes of these con- 
ditions does not come within the scope of 
the present volume, but considered broadly, 
they are of two-fold origin: the social or- 
ganisations which have been evolved dur- 
ing the centuries from the Serb root-idea 
of brotherhood as the basis of human re- 
lationship; the other cause of non-pauper- 

1 This statement will be found recorded in the 
Statesman's Yearbook under Servia. 

It would be superfluous to state exception at this 
present time when every man, woman and child 
throughout both Servian Kingdoms are making heroic 
sacrifices of goods and life itself to help in the war of 
liberation, where many women are serving not only 
in the commissariat and hospitals but are actually fight- 
ing with the guns side by side with their brothers and 
husbands, when nearly every home has lost a father 
or brothers or husband, when there are bound to be 
many orphans, that there is intense suffering and need, 
conditions which must prevail for some time after the 
war. 

302 



N I A 




f^^r \^ 



European Problems 

ism no doubt, has close connection with the 
fact that the vast waves of gigantic in- 
dustrial exploitation which have swept 
over western lands, binding literally, whole 
populations to the wheel, creating at once 
fabulous riches for the few and miseries 
and thralldoms for the many hitherto un- 
known in the world's history, have not yet 
invaded Servia to overwhelm and to blot 
from existence those freehold homes 
spread evenly among its population which 
have caused it to be called by Europeans 
" The poor man's paradise." 

COPY. 
ANDREW CARNEGIE, 
2 East 91st St. 

New York, 29th Nov., 1912. 
Prince Lazarovich-Hrebelianovich, 
Care Duffield & Co., Publishers, 
36 West 37th Street, New York. 

Dear Prince Lazarovich-Hrebeliano- 
VICh: Many thanks for your treasured volumes, 
which will give me what I do not possess — a 
thoro knowledge of the Servian people. What 
you told me about them interested me deeply. I 




Map showing 

The Serb-inhabited Block 

of Territory. 

Railroad ^.. 



The Orient Question 

feel mj^self drawn to dip into these volumes on 
my first day of leisure. One needs to know a 
country where there are no pauper classes, no 
workhouses or necessity for poor-relief. 

This gives other nations something to live 
up to. 

With renewed expression of appreciation, I am 
Very truly yours, 

Andrew Carnegie. 

In Belgrade, foreign influences have 
somewhat crept in, which either unwit- 
tingly or consciously, tend to discourage 
many characteristic Serb customs and 
Ideals. These effects, are possibly, partly 
owing to the vicious position of a Capital 
too close to the enemy's borders, but they 
have not been able to penetrate to any 
extent the country at large, which still re- 
mains true to Itself. As in Serb Lands 
seized by Austria-Hungary, every effort 
has been exerted to destroy those Serb in- 
stitutions, so too^ within the Kingdom It- 
self, forces representing foreign Interests 
either political or economical, steadily es- 

304 



European Problems 

say to undermine those organisations, so 
fundamental to the national strength. 
Emissaries or agents in various benign 
guises even pass through the country dis- 
tricts attempting to sow dissatisfaction, 
preaching a veritable crusade against the 
existing order. 

On the other hand, social statisticians 
and educators of the first rank are at pres- 
ent leaving American shores to study the 
Servian social conditions, in the interests 
of movements for thorough social recon- 
struction which the western world under 
the sense of growing disillusion with the 
results of heartless industrial exploitation 
and unequal conditions generally, is begin- 
ning to recognise as necessary for the 
stability of civilisation. 

It might not, perhaps, be too wild a hope 
that the principles embodied in the Serb 
institutions, which are neither socialism 
nor communism, but an entirely workable 
form of co-operation tested by centuries, 
may come in time to form the basis of that 

305 



The Orient Question 

industrial regeneration which is the object 
of so much earnest research in western 
lands. 

The conditions in the free Kingdom of 
Servia, where every man may have his own 
home with free education of a high stand- 
ard, where there are no pauper-classes, 
where the whole population has a voice 
in a truly constitutional government, fur- 
nish a striking contrast with the state of 
affairs in the Serb Lands held in thrall by 
Austria-Hungary : — Croatia-Slavonia, Ba- 
nat, Batchka, Dalmatia, Bosnia and Her- 
zegovina, where the Serb institutions have 
been, and are being, systematically broken 
down and destroyed thus setting at large 
countless numbers of paupers forced into 
industrial slavery or emigration. 

To illustrate by Croatia — which has 
been the longest in Austro-Hungarian 
hands : — Of the total revenue of Croa- 
tia, fifty-six per cent, is paid into the Hun- 
garian treasury, the remaining forty-four 
per cent, being the only amount available 

306 



European Problems 

to meet the expenses of the local Croat ad- 
ministration. In 1 90 1 the total revenue 
was 44,683,723 crowns^ which, after de- 
ducting the expenses of collection and offi- 
cial manipulation, left a net revenue of 36,- 
120,150 crowns, so that the fifty-six per 
cent, to Hungary was 20,227,284 crowns 
and the remaining forty-four per cent, for 
Croatia was 15,892,864 crowns. The 
Croatian apportionment having to cover 
all administrative and public affairs, edu- 
cational, etc., in the country, cannot even 
come near to being sufficient. The Croa- 
tian exchequer is in a chronic state 
of deficit. In 1904 the internal Croa- 
tian budget called for an expenditure of 
20,600,000 crowns, creating for that year 
a deficit of 3,800,000 crowns. The free 
Kingdom of Servia with the same race and 
an area and population of about the same 
extent had in 1907 an income of 95,000,- 
000 francs with well balanced expendi- 

1 One crown equals about 31 cents, and one franc 
equals 20 cents. 



The Orient Question 

ture, leaving a revenue surplus of 41,000 
francs. Servia, with no emigration and no 
paupers, Croatia, with an enormous emi- 
gration of illiterate and unskilled labour 
and a population practically starving. 

It can easily be understood that suspen- 
sion of constitutional guarantees — a dis- 
cipline frequently " necessitated," rule by 
police measures, military force or any ^ 
other form or degree of stern repression 
by the Austro-Hungarian Government, is 
powerless to stifle the Serb desire for na- 
tional liberty, or definitively withstand or 
withhold the tide which carry these prov- 
inces toward union within the borders of 
a great and free Servian State. 

It might appear natural to suppose that 
the Germans form the one satisfied group 
of the Hapsburg dominions, but such is 
not the case. The increasing strength and 
pride of the German Empire arouses a 
Pan-Germanic impulse among Austrian 
Germans who would wish to share the 

308 



European Problems 

power and well-being of that mighty cre- 
ation which represents their own racial 
genius, and in union with which, alone, they 
can find full scope of individual and na- 
tional expression. The Irresistible tug of 
this deep under-tow finds startling indica- 
tion not only in the " Wacht am Rhein " 
and " Hell Dir im Siegeskranze " sang 
with clink of mugs, but In the cries of 
*' down with Hapsburg " and " long live 
Hohenzollern " which have burst forth 
on more than one occasion under the win- 
dows of the Imperial palace at Vienna. 

When Bismark had built the German 
Empire and saw that it was good, he saw 
too, that considerations Involved In safe- 
guarding its course until It should have 
grown used to its more infinite orbit, neces- 
sitated conclusions of arrangements which 
would delay to a later period of time the 
full rounding out of new Germany's nation- 
making. 

These arrangements aimed at providing 
309 



The Orient Question 

time for interior consolidation and at pre- 
venting the formation of hostile coalitions. 
The designation of Austria as a European 
necessity was at the time literally true in 
the German sense. Germany became 
more and more drawn into the periphery 
of Austrian interests, although with the 
rise of other nations and the interior loos- 
ening of bonds in the Hapsburg realm, 
that necessity and its intrinsic effectiveness 
have been ever on the decrease. 

Emperor William, willy nilly, under 
the mesmeric spell of Bismark's genius, or 
for some other causes, failing to note that 
the famous necessity began some time ago 
to be outworn, has still stubbornly held 
his Empire bound to an arrangement, 
which has led him into actions of no value 
to Germany, even necessitating at the pres- 
ent time heavy increase of German arma- 
ments and financial burdens, and the use- 
lessness of which is beginning to be gen- 
erally recognised among the German 
people, who do not relish the prospect of 

310 



European Problems 

having to shoulder the gun for the Haps- 
burg. 

The collapse of Austria-Hungary is in- 
evitable. 

Will Germany read aright the writing 
on the wall? — understanding that as the 
situation is henceforth, Austria is a mill- 
stone around her neck, and holds im- 
mobilized vast resources of German ma- 
terial necessary to the completion of her 
nation-making without which the work of 
German Empire construction must halt. 

For long, Europe has been accustomed 
to think of Poland as the past tense of, 
" Abandon hope all ye who enter here," 
counting as final, the disposition of the 
Polish question, and in the belief of states- 
men, a Poland retaining certain of its 
ancient disabling theories, could not sur- 
vive in the Europe of to-day. But among 
the Poles themselves, a new spirit of na- 
tionality, based on a new and corrected con- 
ception of independence, has assumed be- 

311 



The Orient Question 

ing, inspiring the populations with visions 
of a reconstructed State avoiding old 
causes of weakness, a country in which 
they, too, shall build in the new time. 

"Poland is not yet lost" — but llveth. 

The most potent factors in this Polish 
resurrection are : — a new apprehension 
of the meaning of national liberty, and 
the awakening realization that the fact of 
most importance to them is that they are 
Slavs. 

At the time of reconstruction in Russia 
the idea was mooted and supported by the 
Prime-minister Stolypin, to endow Russian 
Poland with independent Home-Rule 
within the Russian Empire. Austria and 
Germany made protests, which at that 
critical period of crisis in Russia, could not 
be ignored. It is incontestable that by 
such a measure Russia would attain the 
summit of sagacious statesmanship; it is 
not less to be doubted that she would by 
that act have thrown both Austrian and 
Prussian Poland into flames, in an attempt 

312 



European Problems 

to make junction with such a newly created 
Poland. 

Following the utter failure in the Haps- 
burg Realm of the Metternich system of 
oppression and feudal assertion, and the 
collapse of the Bach system, constitutional 
reconstruction expressing different points of 
view were proclaimed, but without effec- 
tual realization. In 1867, came the dual 
constitutional reorganisation separating 
the Hapsburg provinces into Austrian and 
Hungarian. This arrangement y^^as made 
to support the great Austrian scheme of 
crushing Prussia with French help and re- 
establishing Hapsburg imperialism in Ger- 
many. 

As that reconstruction was accomplished 
solely for the foreign imperialistic pur- 
poses of the Dynasty, regardless of the 
interior needs of the realm, the structure 
was unsound and its inherent weakness and 
Instability soon became apparent, aggra- 
vating the centrifugal tendencies of the 

313 



The Orient Question 

heterogeneous elements of the realm, por- 
tending disruption. 

As a measure of consolidating the 
Hapsburg throne, a federation was pro- 
posed with self-government for the various 
national fragmentary groups, but that the- 
ory was found impracticable on account of 
the strong national feeling among those 
groups and the contiguity of their lands 
with the territories of their several parent- 
nations outside of the Hapsburg borders; 
the sole remaining conclusion — conced- 
ing the hypothesis of the necessity of a 
Hapsburg Empire — has led to the present 
Hapsburg decision, that their only way of 
retaining imperial power lies in the out 
and out military conquest of the three 
neighbouring nations, fragments of whose 
territories and peoples they have already 
brought under their sway: — Those na- 
tions are: Servia, Rumania and Poland. 

Austria's present bold attempts to de- 
spoil Montenegro and Servia of the lands 
they have liberated from the Turk and to 

314 



European Problems 

create for them a situation of perpetual 
Insecurity and menace, using Albania for 
that purpose, is one of the steps laid down 
by Vienna in the plan to conquer Servia. 

The mediaeval means which the Haps- 
burgs propose of solving their dynastic 
problem, could only be accomplished with 
the help of Germany and Italy, and would 
be accompanied by the dreaded arma- 
geddon, turning all Europe into one vast 
battle-field. 

It has been suggested that the solution 
of the Hapsburg problem least dangerous 
to Europe and more in accordance with 
modern State formations would be the dis- 
solution of the incongruous Austro-Hun- 
garian Empire and the joining of each of 
the national fragments to its mother-na- 
tion, leaving the entities of Tcheck and 
Magyars as a remainder. 

The Germans would join the German 
Empire. The Poles would join Poland, 

315 



The Orient Question 

the Rumanians Rumania, the Servians 
Servia, the Russians Russia, etc. 

But the plan of the Hapsburgs is to 
conquer with the sword the adjoining 
motherlands and sovereign States, Ru- 
mania, Servia, Montenegro, Greece and 
Bulgaria and so to impose over a vast ex- 
panse of territory the mediaeval system of 
a Dynasty and its possessions. 

In this age of the rights of man and the 
rights of nations, the survival of the Haps- 
burg lust for personal dynastic agrandise- 
ment and power, especially, taking into 
consideration the miserable system of hu- 
man exploitation in all lands coming un- 
der Hapsburg sway — is a menace to 
Europe and to all that the centuries have 
won for freedom throughout the world. 



316 



APPENDIX A 

An open letter in the Servian language 
of which the following is an English trans- 
lation, was published, in the second week 
of March, 19 12, in Belgrade in the lead- 
ing Servian Newspapers including the 
Tribuna. It was also published dur- 
ing the same period in Montenegro and 
other Serb lands. 

To-DAY when strange rumours of Servian 
downfall are printed in the daily press through- 
out the world, and when Servia must again either 
prove her right to exist as an independent State 
and her strength both moral and material to en- 
force that right, or else be overwhelmed, I trust 
that as a simple Servian I may without apology 
submit for your consideration thoughts which 
must be uppermost in the minds of all Serbs 
wherever Serbs are. The fact that these rumours 
are without doubt inspired by those who would 



The Orient Question 

wish them to be true makes them none the less 
worthy of attention. 

In 1908, prior to the seizure of Bosnia, the late 
King Edward VII., of England, sent the follow- 
ing message through a high official, who still holds 
his post at the British Court: " Tell Lazarovich 
that Europe is not going to permit the Servians 
to make their Unification/' to which the answer 
was: *' It is God who permits — It was not by 
the will of Europe that Italian unity was made, 
nor by Europe's permission that the Germans 
created their unification in 1866 and 1871." 

We forget too easily the international impor- 
tance of Servia and the reasons of that impor- 
tance. 

We must remember that, the present fierce 
competition among European powers for trade 
and political supremacy in the Orient has intensi- 
fied the Near Eastern Problem in all its com^ 
plexity. This problem involves the possession 
and control of that part of the world which, by 
its command of the land routes and the water- 
way via Suez eastward, including those points 
where the most direct communications between 
East and West can be interrupted, forms the 
strategic key to the Orient and Southern Asia. 

318 



Appendix 

The main strategic point of the Near East 
commanding the whole Balkan Peninsula lies in 
Servia. 

There also at Nish cross the two great longi- 
tudinal valleys forming the shortest and most 
direct roadway between Europe and the Orient. 
From Nish these two roads lead one eastward 
to Constantinople and Asia, the other southward 
to Salonika and Suez. 

That supreme strategic position places the Ser- 
vian States and the Servian people in the front 
rank of significance in regard to the Near East- 
ern Problem. In fact the very kernel of the 
Near Eastern Question is an international con- 
test for the possession of the Servian plateau as 
well as of Suez and Constantinople. 

God has given to us Serbs this dominant 
strategic position in the Balkan Peninsula and 
made us the keeper of this great gateway between 
Europe and the Orient. Peril is bound up with 
this trust, which focuses upon Servia the desire 
of other nations, but this sacred trusteeship holds 
also the potentiality of national greatness. 

To guard the way from the Danube to the 
i^gean Sea is the Servian mission. 

The line of natural gravity for Servian de- 
velopment is towards the south by the Vardar 
valley through the old Servian lands to the i^gean 



The Orient Question 

Sea with Salonika as Servian Port. Along this 
direction lies the only possible trend of construct- 
ive policy insuring an enduring and powerful 
Servian State. 

We have to remember that this policy formed 
the basis of the work of Nemanya culminating in 
the Servian Empire under Dushan. 

The revolt of Vukashin alone made possible a 
battle of Kossovo. 

The defeat of Kossovo and the death of Lazar 
wrecked and dashed to earth all that the Neman- 
yas and the Servian people had built up during 
the centuries and annihilated Servian unity and 
all constructive Servian policy from that day to 
this. 

The present site of the Servian Capital on the 
northernmost border and looking north Is a 
symbol of all that has been wrong and mistaken 
in Servian policy since the days of Kossovo. 

In that direction lies Servian annihilation. 

Either Servia must turn and go frankly and 
squarely along her true old road southward 
building up anew the fallen walls of her past 
greatness or she must inevitably become absorbed 
by her stronger neighbours and sink Into ob- 
livion. 

In this connection I venture to recall a project 
320 



Appendix 

which I framed many years ago for the construc- 
tion of a waterway from the Danube to the 
JEgesin Sea, and whose realisation will some day 
contribute an economic measure of first impor- 
tance not only to the accomplishment of Servian 
destiny aiding the development of her productive 
resources, but it is self-evident that this water- 
way which will complete the extensive canal and 
river-systems of Central Europe, shortening the 
way from the North Seas to Suez by 3000 Kilo- 
metres, will be of vast international benefit, mak- 
ing it therefore a sound and practical proposition. 
In the interest of this project I laid before the 
Royal Servian Governm.ent in 1 909, plans and 
estimates which I had caused to be prepared by 
the most eminent Servian Engineer for the regu- 
larisation and canalisation of the Morava and 
Vardar Rivers and a Canal connecting them 
across Preshevo watershed, so to form a con- 
tinuous waterway from the mouth of the Mo- 
rava and the Danube in Servia to Salonika, 
which would thereby become the most important 
commercial port in Eastern Mediterranean. 

In such times as these, Serbs need to remember 
the three precious gifts of inheritance which our 
fathers have left us : — 

Our Holy Orthodox Faith, so sublime and so 
321 



The Orient Question 

simple that an English political writer has writ- 
ten of It: — "In view of the present conditions 
caused by commercialism in Western countries 
which make the few rich richer, and the many 
poor poorer still, the despairing poor of all Anglo- 
Saxondom might see in the Holy Orthodox 
Church an aspect of Christianity new to them 
and one they might accept " and " that a wave 
of religious revival such as the world has several 
times seen might roll over the West and, at the 
right psychological moment, unite all within the 
Holy Orthodox Creed." 

Our second legacy from our fathers is the 
glory of their achievements in wars of self- 
defence. 

The third gift they have bequeathed to us is 
their wisdom embodied in the Servian social in- 
stitutions formulating the principles of human 
brotherhood and individual rights, and high Ideals 
of pure and noble manhood and womanhood. 
Thanks to those fundamental Institutions Servia, 
alone, of all western countries Is spared the sad 
sight of thousands of men, women and children 
working under the condition of slaves In the 
mines and factories with half-empty stomachs or 
else dying of hunger in the streets, such as Is seen 
not only In neighbouring lands but In France, 
in England and In America. 

322 



Appendix 

The Inheritance by the Serbs of these great In- 
stitutional blessings which have been developed 
among our people through the ages and are al- 
ways seeking more and more perfect formulation, 
gives to Servians a right to be proud and justifies 
our undying faith In the future of our country 
and our race. 

Much has been urged on the subject of allies, 
but our people have to consider that they can 
never successfully ask until they have something 
substantial to offer In return. We all know 
that no nation can be strong unless It Is united 
in spirit and determination to win — and that 
nation which works together as one man, com- 
bining Its energies for the accomplishment of a 
sound constructive policy, Is bound to win, and 
will have no need to seek allies, because other 
nations will soon perceive Its value and seek Its 
alliance. 

Servla's best ally has always been Servla. 

The conquering might of a nation as of an 
army is not in mere numbers — not in big bat- 
talions, nor yet In the sole mechanical superiority 
of the armament, but that which makes an army 
or a nation irresistible Is the spirit of the man 
behind the gun and the spirit of the nation back 
of that man. As it was said of Napoleon that 

323 



The Orient Question 

his presence in battle was worth an Army corps, 
so let us remember that the power of the true 
Serb spirit was proved when Milenko Stoykovich 
and his 2000 men defeated Hafiz Pasha and his 
40,000 at the battle of Ivankovatz, making every 
Serb literally worth 20 Turks. 

The sure stronghold of Servian defence is the 
soul of every Servian man and woman who un- 
derstands the value among nations of the Serb 
race, and who thrills to the necessity of a united 
determination to build up from within a national 
strength grounded on the foundations laid by our 
fathers, embodying the Christian principle of 
brotherly love which has been the germ ideal of 
our institutions for centuries : — a glorious State 
representing the creation of purely Servian Gen- 
ius. 

I would that every one in the land could be 
able to compare the Serb social institutions, ideals 
and achievements with those of other nations. I 
think then all might, irrespective of political 
party, join hands with all those patriotic brothers 
whose hearts are in this consecrated work of giv- 
ing to Servia the proud place in the world which 
is hers by right. 

Lazarovich-Hrebelianovich. 

February 26, 19 12. 

324 



APPENDIX B 



MEMORANDA 



The following pages cited from the 
text of two Memoranda submitted, indi- 
cate progressive steps by which the Mace- 
donian Committee sought to obtain effec- 
tive relief: — 

I. 

Macedonian Committee to His British Majesty^s 

Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. 
Re: No. 27630. 

November, 1903. 

Your Excellency: I have the honour to 
submit the following suggestions to your Excel- 
lency. ... 

The origin of the strife and miseries of the 
Christian populations in European Turkey 
(Macedonia) can be found in: — 

1st. The Agrarian and Taxation Question. 
2nd. The issues and complications involved in 



The Orient Question 

the Question of Supreme Ecclesiastical Author- 
ity. Autonomous Church Government is identi- 
fied with Nationality in the minds of the Ortho- 
dox Christian population throughout the Balkan 
States. 

I St. The solution of the Agrarian and Taxa- 
tion question could be based upon a plan reverting 
to the original system in existence before 1829, 
by vi^hich the Headmen of the villages or Elders 
of families collected all taxes and remitted them 
to the proper authority. 

The rate of taxation in those times was gen- 
erally estimated and fixed by common accord for 
a number of years in advance. The same system, 
which was also applied, in the relations of land- 
lord and tenant, could be reverted to, and made 
general. That would prevent the authorities and 
landlords from coming into direct contact with 
the people, and thereby remove the oppression 
and abuses at present connected with tax-collec- 
tion. A reversion to that old system would be, 
as it proved before, entirely to the interests of the 
Imperial Ottoman treasury. 

2nd. In regard to the question of Autonomous 
Church Administration. 

There is in creed, dogma and canonical law 

326 



Appendix 

no difference between the Patriarchat or Greek 
Church and the Exarchat or Bulgarian Church. 
The separation refers only to autonomy of ad- 
ministration. 

The excommunication of the Bulgarian Exarch 
was pronounced on account of administrative dis- 
obedience, and the strife, comparable to a fight 
between two Bishops of the same Church for a 
parish in the same diocese. 

At the time of the erection of the Exarchat 
only a part of the Slavonic populations of those 
districts to-day forming the disturbed localities in 
Macedonia, came forward to recognize the Bul- 
garian Exarch as their religious head and claimed 
to be part of the new '' milet " or " nation " of 
the Exarch. 

The strife in those districts is the fight between 
Greek Patriarch and Bulgarian Exarch for the 
extension of their respective dioceses; national 
conscience enters into that contest only In so far 
as Patriarch and Exarch represent rival national 
propaganda. 

It is believed that the following measures 
would put an end to these strifes, and make pacif- 
ication of the country possible. 

Bulgaria (Bulgaria proper and Eastern 
Rumelia) to be declared independent and erected 
into a Kingdom. 



The Orient Question 

That measure would automatically cause the 
Archbishopric of Bulgaria (to-day suffragan of 
the Exarch and identified with the limits of the 
State of Bulgaria) to become an autonomous ad- 
ministrative autocephalous Church. 

When, in 1870, the Exarchat was erected it was 
in fact the re-erection of the old Bulgarian Patri- 
archat of Tirnovo (in Bulgaria proper) that had 
been suppressed by the Phanar about 180 years 
ago; but for political reasons the title '' Exarch " 
was adopted and Constantinople taken as See, 
instead of title " Patriarch of Tirnovo " with See 
at Tirnovo in Bulgaria proper. 

Entirely independent from the Bulgarian 
autonomous Church thus limited to the Bulgarian 
Kingdom, there would remain in Constantinople 
an autonomous Bulgarian Metropolitan with 
jurisdiction limited within the Turkish borders. 

This creation of an independent and autono- 
mous Church administration within Turkey 
would remove the " legal pretext of Bulgarian 
national propaganda," which is the cause to-day 
of so much bitter strife and violence in Mace- 
donia. 

This accomplished, the second measure would 
be: — 

To divide European Turkey, (Albania ex- 

328 



Appendix 

eluded , into four Autonomous, Autocephalous 
Metropolitan Dioceses. 

A. The land north of the border of the King- 
dom of Greece and south of a line straight from 
east to west, beginning at the river BIstritza — 
Gulf of Salonika — ^population Greek, to be 
under the sole religious administration of the 
Patriarch of Constantinople, who would be the 
Metropolitan of that diocese. 

B. The land east of the river Struma^ bounded 
on the south by the shores of the iEgean Sea, on 
the east by the shores of the Black Sea, and on 
the north by the southern Bulgarian border, two 
autocephalous dioceses to be respectively under 
the Patriarch and under the autonomous Bul- 
garian Metropolitan (to be substituted at Con- 
stantinople in place of the Exarch). 

The parishes In this district are so well de- 
fined that there is, and could be, no collision 
between the authority of the Patriarch and that 
of the Bulgarian Metropolitan — or Exarch. 

C. The land to-day known as the Vilayet of 
Kossovo, the Sandjak of Novi-Bazar, and some 
districts of the Vilayet of Monastir, to be under 
a new Metropolitan, as an autonomous auto- 
cephalous Church district, a Serbian Metropol- 
itan — the re-erection of the old Serbian Metrop- 

329 



The Orient Question 

olis or Patrlarchat of Ipek, suppressed about 150 
years ago^ — with the See at Skoplya or Ipek. 

D. The remaining land (Macedonia proper), 
to be made an autocephalous diocese under a new 
Metropolitan — ■ the re-erection of the old Me- 
tropolis of Ochrida, suppressed 150 years ago. 

This new organisation of Church administra- 
tion throughout Macedonia, would as a matter of 
fact, and automatically, make, according to the 
practice in Turkey, the respective Metropolitans 
the heads, both religious and lay, of the Christians 
in their districts. All Church dependencies, such 
as schools, etc., would follow the new distribu- 
tions. 

In the constitution of the Turkish State, the 
Christians form " nations " or " milets " under 
the religious and lay authority of the head of 
their autonomous-autocephalous churches. The 
status personalis and all questions arising there- 
from are judged by the courts of their churches. 
All that concerns the status realis goes before 
the Turkish authorities, as do all questions of 
public order. 

The many judicial reforms imposed by Europe, 
by ignoring the bearing of this situation, have 
often brought only confusion and disorder into 
these matters, and therefore have failed. 

There would be only two new autocephalous 



Appendix 

Churches or church districts to be created, or, 
better said, to be re-erected, namely: the Sees of 
Ochrf da — dating originally from the ninth 
century, — and the See of Ipek (originally dating 
from the thirteenth century as autocephal). 

These creations or re-creations would be in 
keeping with the practice of the Orthodox 
Church. The Patriarch of Constantinople should 
recognise these newly created autocephal 
church bodies, and delegate to them all the ec- 
clesiastical and lay power received by him through 
privileges dating from Sultan Mohammed in 
1453 at the fall of Constantinople, and all the 
lay power acquired by him in absorbing those two 
former autocephal churches, as well as all other 
privileges granted to those churches by various 
Sultans and afterward absorbed by him. The 
Patriarch could relinquish those powers, as prece- 
dents have shown, against yearly monetary pay- 
ments, or tribute. 

To each of these autonomous Metropolitans, 
a European Commissioner should be attached, 
who would be the natural spokesman and repre- 
sentative of the Orthodox native Christians before 
all Turkish authority; and such a representa- 
tive would have weight. 

These proposed reforms and measures would do 
away with much of the evil prevailing in those 



The Orient Question 

lands, and It is believed with some confidence, 
that normal peaceful conditions would ensue. 

It is thought that H. I. M. the Sultan could 
grant such measures. 



I am. Sir, 

Your etc., etc., 

Lazarovich, Delegate. 



332 



2. 



Memorandum submitted in the spring of 
IQ04, through the good offices of Sir Henry 
Drummond Wolff, Privy Councillor , Ambassa- 
dor, etc, J etc., to H. R. ^ I. M.j King Edward, 
and the British Government, and subsequently to 
the German Government: 

, , . The proposal submitted is: To cre- 
ate a Federation of the Balkan States with Servia 
as basis. 

Such a federation could only be formed with 
the support of at least one or two of the Great 
Powers, whose interests would thereby be served. 

The maintenance of the Ottoman Empire in 
Europe has hitherto been an unavoidable part of 
British policy; there has been no other bulwark 
against northern aggression. 

Political events, however, of the past few 
years, and the steadily growing sense of a com- 
munity of interests and an increasing tendency 
towards national unity among the races of the 
Balkans, has developed a new situation and made 

333 



The Orient Question 

evident the possibility of forming those peoples 
into a new state strong enough to resist outside 
interference and to be substituted for the Otto- 
man rule in Europe. 

The existence of such a state would do away 
forever with the necessity of upholding Turkish 
supremacy in the Near East. 

The practical accomplishment of this plan in- 
volves the settlement of the Macedonian ques- 
tion, and the unification of the Serbian race into 
one state, as well as the unification of the Greek 
and Bulgarian races into their respective states. 

The unification of the Serbian race would de- 
mand the gradual union with Serbia: of the 
Vilayet ol Kossovo (old Servia) districts in 
the northern part of the Vilayet of Monastir the 
Sandjak of Novi-Bazar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, 
the Principality of Montenegro, with extended 
border up to the River Drin., — etc., etc. 

The unification of the Bulgarian race would 
call for the annexation by Bulgaria of the Vilayet 
of Adrianople, and the eastern part of the Vilayet 
of Salonika. 

The unification of the Greek race would neces- 
sitate the annexation by Greece of the southern 
part of the Vilayets of Monastir and Yanina, 
parts of Salonika, the Islands of Creta, and all 

334 



Appendix 

the other islands and the Greek coast of Asia 
Minor. 

From the remainder of the Turkish European 
possessions should be created two states, namely: 

1st. Albania, including part of the Vilayet of 
Scutari south of the River Drin, the northern 
part of the Vilayet of Yanina, and a district of 
the Vilayet of Monastir. 

2nd. Macedonia, including the greater part of 
the Vilayet of Salonika and the greater part of 
the Vilayet of Monastir. 

The first steps towards the federation of these 
peoples would be a settlement of the Macedonian 
question, providing for the ultimate separation 
of the different districts and provinces according 
to the allotment above suggested; that fixing of 
the borders of the new provinces in European 
Turkey would remove all cause of misunderstand- 
ing and friction which might otherwise be pro- 
voked by the rival aspirations of the surrounding 
states and impose upon them the recognition of 
the necessity for the creation of the autonomous 
States of Macedonia and Albania. . . . 

... A scheme of settlement was proposed in 
November last, 1903, inviting H. I. M. the Sul- 
tan to, himself, grant a reasonable measure of 
self-government to the Christians of European 

335 



The Orient Question 

Turkey. Enclosed, Is a copy of the outline of 
the project In the form in which It was accepted 
by H. E. the Turkish Ambassador In London 
for transmission to H. I. M. the Sultan, after 
unofficial discussion of Its terms. 

The project submitted was entirely workable 
and fair to Christians and Moslems alike. Its 
main points were: That H. I. M. the Sultan 
should of his own free will grant a statute for 
the government of his Christian subjects In 
European Turkey by Christians : making them re- 
sponsible for their own administration and con- 
trol, they still to remain under direct authority of 
H. I. M. the Sultan. 

There should be created five provinces accord- 
ing to nationalities': — 

Macedonia — Including a part of the Vilayet of 
Monastir and part of the Vilayet of Salonika — 
( Macedo-Slovenes) . 

Albania — Part of the Vilayet of Scutari, part 
of Vilayet of Yanlna and a district of the Vilayet 
of Monastir. (Albanians.) 

Thessaly-Epirus — Southern parts of the Vila- 
yets of Monastir, Yanlna and Salonika. 
( Greeks. ) 

Old Serbia — ^The Vilayet of Kossovo, sandjak 
of Novl-Bazar and part of the Vilayet of Mon- 
astir, and a district of Scutari. (Servians.) 



Appendix 

Adrianople — The Vilayet of Adrianople and 
the eastern part of the Vilayet of Salonika. 
(Bulgarians.) 

These provinces should be sub-divided Into 
districts, Christian Districts and Moslem Dis- 
tricts: each district to be respectively under sole 
Christian or Moslem control and administration, 
according as the predominating population nu- 
merically should be Christian or Moslem. 

For the preservation of public order, a mil- 
itary police force should be recruited each In its 
own district, and be under the authority of the 
Governor of that district. The organisation, 
drilling and commands of this force should be, 
during the first few years, entrusted to European 
ojfficers. 

For the administration of justice In the Chris- 
tian districts. Christian courts should be insti- 
tuted. 

In order that these reforms should be applied 
without delay^ it would be necessary that the 
Sultan should issue a Hatti-Shereef containing 
provisions for their Immediate execution, making 
unnecessary any further orders or supplementary 
provisions from the Sultan for the accomplish- 
ment of the programme. 

For that reason the Hatti-Shereef should con- 
tain: — 

337 



The Orient Question 

1. The creation of the provinces fixing the 
demarcation of their borders. 

2. The subdivision of each province into 
Christian and Moslem districts, v^^Ith provisional 
delimitations of their borders. 

3. The necessary and detailed provisions for 
the creation of the new administrations in the 
Christian districts: Justice, Finance, Political 
Administration, Cult, and Education, Agricul- 
ture and Commerce, and all other branches of 
administration requisite to a self-governing body. 

4. The appointment of the Christian Gov- 
ernors, vi^ith full investment of authority. 

5. Provision for the immediate creation of all 
local representative bodies. 

6. Provision for the immediate creation of a 
military police corps; its recruitment, formation 
and instruction and the nomination of its officers. 

7. The necessary orders for the immediate 
evacuation by the Turkish troops of the Christian 
districts. 

8. The naming of a mixed commission v^hich 
should be composed of an equal number of Chris- 
tian and Moslems, to visit each province to rec- 
tify the borders between the Christian and Ma- 
homedan districts according to the reclamations 
of the inhabitants. The Commission should be 

338 



Appendix 

assisted locally in each province by a fixed num- 
ber of Christian and Mahomedan notables 
elected from and by the inhabitants of the district. 

9. The Hatti-Shereef should become law and 
enter into force on the day of its proclamation. 

The powers should be asked to appoint a com- 
mission to supervise the execution of the Hatti- 
Shereef. 

In order to provide for the initial expense of 
the new Christian administration it would be 
necessary to raise a loan. 

To this scheme was added a suggested settle- 
ment of the religious troubles in these provinces. 
It was proposed that the Servian Church should 
be made autocephalous in Turkey and that an 
autonomous Archbishopric should be created in 
Macedonia. 

Recent events have indicated that it would be 
impossible to obtain at once a grant from the Ot- 
toman Government, containing so full and com- 
plete a programme, especially as it would meet 
with hostility from Russia, France, Austria and 
Italy. France can never be otherwise concerned 
as regards the Balkans than in putting another 
Power in the Mediterranean to counterbalance 
British influence in those waters. One of the 
foremost Frenchmen of the day said recently, 

339 



The Orient Question 

" France can never have any other policy in the 
Near East than to see Russia preponderant; Rus- 
sia in Constantinople would be all to the ad- 
vantage of France and would be the only safe 
balance to growing British pretensions in the 
Mediterranean." 

The Ottoman Government has not the fore- 
sight to see that complete measures of reform 
would prolong its rule in Europe ; and the chances 
of obtaining, anything like an adequate degree of 
self-government as a grant, become more and 
more remote. 

For that reason, other methods of securing the 
desired control must be adopted; the best hope 
of success lies in attacking first the most vulner- 
able point of the Turkish system, its financial 
weakness. 

Some need of the Turkish Government must be 
satisfied in return for the means of obtaining a 
beginning of relief for the populations. 

The most vexatory and the most ruinous of all 
the abuses by which the populations of European 
Turkey are oppressed is the system of the tax col- 
lection. The taxes in themselves are not ex- 
orbitant at the rate officially announced, but the 
abuses arising from the method in which they 
are collected is one of the chief causes of despera- 
tion among the people. 



Appendix 

At the present time the Turkish Exchequer Is 
in pressing need of funds. 

All Turkish resources now available have been 
already pledged to meet the services of the actual 
Ottoman debt, and the finding of a new resource 
capable of meeting a new loan would be apt to 
attract favorable attention In Constantinople, and 
would probably remove the difficulties which 
hitherto have obstructed all proposals of reform 
bearing upon tax-collecting or financial adminis- 
tration. 

Those difficulties are the same to-day as they 
were before the Turco-Russlan war, during the 
conference at Constantinople, the same difficulties 
lay at the base of the obstruction to the execution 
of the plan of reform prepared for European 
Turkey by the Congress of Berlin. The diffi- 
culty has always been, that the tax-collecting 
yields to a large class of Turkish officials rich 
revenues and has formed the source of many of 
the fortunes of the rich Pashas. 

David Urquhart, in 1833, declared that the 
autonomy of the local administration is absolutely 
necessary to the well-being of the Turkish popu- 
lation. Urquhart found that all reforms left to 
be applied by Turkish officials were only used by 
them as a means of enriching themselves at the 
expense of the people. 



The Orient Question 

On the occasion of the Constantinople confer- 
ence, the Porte rejected the European reform 
scheme, repulsing especially that section concern- 
ing finance, and a Turkish personage offered the 
following explanation: "How can we accord 
a system of administration which would have the 
eftect of reducing to misery about 30,000 of us? 
How would we live and what would become of 
us?" This speech is recorded in an official 
report; it embodies, no less now than it did 
then, the main difficulty in the way of the appli- 
cation of all schemes of reform for European 
Turkey. 

That obstruction could only be removed by 
either wiping out completely the Turkish rule In 
Europe, or by profiting by the financial distress 
of the Ottoman Government. 

To create a new resource making it possible to 
raise a new loan for the Turkish Government, 
would, according to the means I suggest, open up 
to the Turkish Government the prospect of rais- 
ing other loans upon the same resources, at a 
later period, and be a further Inducement to the 
Ottoman Government to accept the terms pro- 
posed. 

The honest and efficient farming of the Tithes 
could be made to furnish the desired resource; 
also, the control of the tithe-farming would be a 



Appendix 

means in hand of at once relieving the people 
from the abuses and burdens of the present cor- 
rupt administration. 

That control would lead to more extended 
measure, of improvement in the agricultural and 
economic conditions, and would, by degrees, per- 
mit the development and gradual accomplishment 
of the original programme of self-government for, 
at least, the Christian populations of these lands. 

The object of the present project is: — 

To find guarantees for a loan to be made to 
Turkey^ with the aim of inducing the Turkish 
Government to hand over to a syndicate the re- 
organisation of the present system of collecting 
the direct taxes in European Turkey. . . . 

. . . The object of this scheme is to relieve 
the people from the abuses of the present system 
as practised by the Turkish Administration, and 
is intended to be the first step towards the prac- 
tical solution of the Near Eastern question. 

Statistics show that such a loan could be raised, 
and tax-collecting managed in such a way as to 
guarantee its service, relieve the oppression, pay 
the usual returns to the Imperial treasury, pay 
costs of collection service, pay the service of the 
loan and leave a surplus for the improvement of 
the agricultural and commercial conditions of 
the country. 

343 



The Orient Question 

The direct taxes of the Turkish Empire in- 
clude : — 

1. A ground and house tax 

(Verghi) excluding Con- 
stantinople .£T. 2,236,092 

2. Income tax 500,000 

3. Tithes 4,689,000 

4. Sheep, camels, and oxen 1,937,849 

5. Hogs . . ., 16,000 

Total direct taxation £T.9,568,94i 

With the exception of the military tax, borne 
solely by the Christians, and the stamp duties, 
both not included in this calculation, the direct 
taxation rates at 40.21 piasters per head, of which 
20.5 piasters are produced by the tithes. 

The population of European Turkey (exclud- 
ing Constantinople, which has a special system of 
taxation) is 4,950^300 persons, which, at the rate 
of 40.21 piasters per head, gives a yearly return 
of £T.i,oi4,8ii.5 (these figures exclude the 
military tax and the stamp duties). 

The financial administration is organised ac- 
cording to Vilayets, each Vilayet having its budget 
and autonomous administration. 

The Verghi, the income tax and the tax on cat- 

344 



Appendix 

tie and hogs are paid directly to the Imperial 
treasury through a tax collector who is the agent 
of the treasury. 

The tithes are auctioned off in advance of the 
harvest to persons v^^ho in turn re-sell their con- 
tracts to other subcontractors. 

The 20.5 piasters per head is reckoned upon 
the sum which the Government receives and not 
upon the sum paid by the taxpayer to the col- 
lectors. 

The present system involves the employment 
of a number of middlemen or exploiters, and their 
gains and costs of collection. 

The tithes rate in Turkey is 12. 1 per cent, of 
the value of the harvest^ which is estimated imme- 
diately before gathering by the tax collector, and 
the estimate, depending upon his discretion and 
good will, varies accordingly. 

During the Turkish Rule in Bosnia, the Con- 
sular statistics showed that though the tithes were 
officially set at Yiq or 10 percent.^ the taxpayer 
was forced to give the collector % and often ^7 or 
from 12% per cent, to 14.28 per cent. The 
auction price paid by the collector for the con- 
tract represented generally only 8 per cent., and 
som.etimes 9 per cent., but never more. 

At present the direct taxes bring in about 8.85 
Frs. (40.21 piasters)^ per head; of this the tithes 

345 



The Orient Question 

are represented by 20.5 plasters, or 4.715 fr., the 
other direct taxes by 4.135 fr. 

In Bulgaria where the agricultural conditions 
are similar and the same taxes exist (tithes hav- 
ing been replaced by a ground rent tax of 10 per 
cent, of the harvest, paid in kind or in specie), 
and where the abuses of collection have been 
suppressed, the State received 10.40 fr. direct 
taxes, which is 1.85 fr. more than that received 
by Turkey, although the rate of taxation is less 
in Bulgaria (tithes). The Bulgarian rate is 10 
per cent., the Turkish tithes 12.1 per cent. Esti- 
mated on the basis of 1.55 difference, which is 
the lowest possible, the surplus which never 
reaches the Imperial treasury Is £287,000 
(sterling) : that surplus would guarantee the 
service of the loan £5,000,000, which would 
demand £250,000 yearly, the rest would more 
than cover the expenses of the administration, 
collection of taxes, etc. 

If the Bulgarian 10.40 fr. Is considered as a 
10 per cent, levy, the 8.85 fr. (Macedonian) 
would represent a levy of 8.5 per cent. 

The tithes (Macedonian) if properly and 
honestly administered with the present levy of 
1 2. 1 per cent, would give 6.94 fr., instead of the 
present yield of 4.71 fr. The surplus in that 
case would be £647,598, an amount which prob- 



Appendix 

abl}^ represents more nearly the amount at present 
paid by the taxpayer in excess of what the treas- 
ury receives; this reckoning is made on the sup- 
position that the tax collector is honest, brings 
no undue pressure to bear upon the peasant and 
levies only the legal amount (i2.i per cent.). 

It is, however, a fact of public notoriety that 
the dishonest administration of this service is one 
of the chief causes of the desperate situation In 
European Turkey. 

I would suggest^ as a system of tax collecting, 
the reversion to a method which was for a short 
period in past times tried with success, namely: 
that the headmen of the villages were allowed to 
collect and hand over the taxes directly to the 
Imperial Treasury. . . . 

... As an example of the relative values of 
the method at present employed and that above 
referred to: in the district of Argyro-Castro in 
European Turkey, the Verghi immobilier and 
the tithes brought under the method at present 
prevailing ii,ooo piasters; but when for a short 
period these taxes were collected by the headmen 
of the village and paid directly by him into the 
treasury, the return was 46,000 piasters. 

The system of personal collection of the taxes 
by the people themselves, corresponds to the 
wishes of the populations and has been made the 

347 



The Orient Question 

subject of frequent petitions to the Imperial Gov- 
ernment. Those petitions have not been granted 
because the farming of the taxes has been a source 
of personal enrichment to the officials. 

As the different nationalities In European 
Turkey are correctly represented by the forma- 
tion suggested of new provinces, each having to a 
certain extent its ow^n more or less special eco- 
nomic customs, It would be easy to shape the 
provinces on a national basis. 

I am, etc., 

Your etc., etc., 

Lazarovich. 



348 



APPENDIX C 

The projected Servian Canal to 
JOIN the Danube River with the 
JEgean Sea.i 

To form in conjunction with the Cen- 
tral European Waterway-systems, a con- 
tinuous and direct water route from the 
Baltic and North Seas to the Mediter- 
ranean and Suez. 

In the spring of 1909 propositions for conces- 
sions to construct a Servian water-way based on 
engineers' reports, preliminary surveys, works 
and projects, with table of estimates as furnished 
to Prince Lazarovich by the foremost engineer 
of Servia, Mr. N. I. Stamenkovich, Professor of 
Hydro-Technics at the University of Belgrade, 
were laid before the Servian Government by 
Mr. V. R. Savich (since then. Chief of a De- 
partment in the Servian Foreign Office) acting 
on behalf of Prince Lazarovich. 

This project is to construct a water-way 382 

1 See U. S. A. Daily Consular and Trade Reports, 
Washington, D. C, July 7, 1909. 

349 



The Orient Question 

miles in length from the river Danube to the 
port of Salonika on the lEge^n Sea, navigable 
for boats of looo tons' carrying capacity, and 
for that purpose to utilise the river Morava in 
Servia and the river Vardar, by connecting them 
with a canal across the low watershed of Presh- 
evo, where both rivers rise and mingle their 
head-waters. From Preshevo the Morava flows 
almost due north into the Danube, while the 
Vardar takes a straight course nearly due south 
to the i^gean Sea. 

That water-route will lie within the great 
north-to-south valley from the Danube to the 
Mgtan Sea, which forms one of the most im- 
pressive geographical features of the Balkan 
peninsula, and through which runs the railroad 
from Belgrade, on the Danube, to Salonika, fol- 
lowing the ancient route of trade. The Bay of 
Salonika is formed by nature to be one of the 
most magnificent harbours of the world. 

The project presents no engineering difficul- 
ties: the average fall of the Morava River is 
0.78%, while that of the Vardar is 1.13%. 

The total extent of surface drained into the 
Morava River is 14,773 square miles, and the 
total extent of area drained into the Vardar is 
9,780 square miles. 

A copious and sufficient supply of water is 



Appendix 

available throughout the year In all seasons for 
the entire water-way. 

The work necessary for the construction of 
the water-way consists in : — 

1. Regulation of the lower courses of both 
rivers. 

2. The canalisation of a part of each river: 
and 

3. The construction of a navigable canal to 
connect them on the Preshevo water-shed, with 
a reservoir or artificial lake to feed the canal. 

The projected Servian water-way will, when 
constructed, complete the great central Euro- 
pean inland water-way systems: The DAN- 
UBE-ODER Canal, the DANUBE-MOL- 
DAU-ELBE Canal, and the DANUBE- 
MAIN-RHINE Canal: will drain the greatest 
Industrial centres of mid-Europe, and will 
shorten the trade water-route between the Suez 
Canal and the ports of Antwerp, Rotterdam, 
Bremen, Hamburg, Stettin, etc., on the North 
and Baltic Seas, via Gibraltar by 1600 miles, 
and via the Inland water-ways, the Danube, the 
Black Sea and Constantinople, by nearly half 
the present length of the route. 

Boats using the projected water-way through 
Servia would avoid the difficulties and the great 
expenditure of both time and money connected 

3S^ 



The Orient Question 

with the shipping traffic on that part of the Dan- 
ube River known as the " Iron Gates " and the 
dangers of Black Sea navigation. 

Enormous sums have been expended by the 
Austro-Hungarian governments in attempts to 
regulate and make navigable that part of the 
Danube, but the result has proved unsatisfac- 
tory. 

A large portion of central European com- 
merce going to the Mediterranean and Suez is 
forced to pass by way of the northern seas and 
the long route of Gibraltar. 

The gravity of this problem can be judged by 
two projects for avoiding the lower Danube, 
which have been offered to the consideration of 
the Austrian and the Hungarian Parliaments. 
One of these calls for the construction of k canal 
across the Alps from Vienna to Trieste, to be 
half canal and half ship-rail, at an estimated 
cost of $100,000,000. The other scheme aims 
at connecting the river Sava, in Croatia, with 
the port of Flume on the Adriatic, necessitating 
a tunnel of 16 miles, bearing a canal and pierc- 
ing the ranges of the Dinaric Alps. No official 
estimates for this proposition have been pub- 
lished, as its feasibility is questioned by the au- 
thorities. 

The traffic estimated as available for these 



Appendix 

projected routes based on the present shipment 
by Hamburg and Triest from and to the Austro- 
Hungarian industrial centres alone is 4,000,000,- 
000 tons yearly. 

Most, if not all, of this tonnage could reason- 
ably be estimated as available for the proposed 
Servian w^ater-way. The commerce from Ger- 
man centres would also find its advantage in us- 
ing the shortened and cheapened new water-way 
toward the eastern Mediterranean. 

The traffic which at present is forced to pass 
via the Iron Gates of the Danube to the Black 
Sea is 2,000,000,000 tons yearly. The estimates 
for the Servian project have left out of account 
any local traffic to be expected from Servian 
commerce, though it is recognised that the water- 
way cannot fail to be an important factor in the 
development of those regions. 

The history of canals has shown in every case 
that the construction of a shorter and cheaper 
water-way has greatly increased the traffic and 
has created traffic where none existed before. 

To cite the Suez Canal as an example: In 
1870 there passed through the canal 436,609 
registered tons: in 1883, 5,777,862 tons: and in 
1907, 20,500,000 tons. 

The history of the canalisation of the river 
Main from Mainz to Frankfurt in Germany 

353 



The Orient Question 

gives an idea of the increase on inland water- 
ways: In the year of its completion, 1887, it 
carried 156,000 tons of traffic, which rose to 
1,087,000 tons in 1899. 

The total cost of the Servian water-way, from 
the Danube to the JEgtan Sea, according to the 
reports and table of estimates furnished by the 
engineers and experts engaged for that purpose, 
would be $65,000,000 — inclusive of all pre- 
liminary and accessory works, appropriations, 
etc., and 4% on the capital required during the 
estimated period of construction. 

These estimates were based upon the actual 
cost of canal-construction in Germany, where 
some of the conditions were less favourable than 
those to be obtained for the Danube-^Egean 
project. 

The sum required yearly, after the completion 
of the canal, to meet all working expenses and 
4% interest on capital is estimated at $3,456,- 
000 — which would be covered by tolls, sale of 
Water-power and income on land and water- 
rights. 

The traffic necessary to insure profit, if reck- 
oned on tolls alone, would have to be 4,000,000 
tons yearly. However, tolls would not be the 
sole source of income, as it is apparent that large 
returns would result from the sale of water- 

354 



^oats 




Appendix 

rights for electric power-works and other pur- 
poses. 

As the projected Servian water-way from the 
Danube to Salonika will, in conjunction with 
the Danube-Elbe, the Danube-Oder and the 
Danube-Main-Rhine canals, tap the richest and 
most extensive productive and industrial areas of 
central Europe, and will furnish the cheapest 
and shortest route for their export and import 
traffic with the Near and Far East, it appears 
safe to predict that^ this water-way will early 
command the tonnage of traffic necessary to am- 
ply justify the Servian Government in hastening 
its construction. 



355 



The Existing Inland Waterways of Central Europe Navigable for Boats 
oF 1000 Tons , and Projected Danube = Aegean Sea Canal. 




Canal 

Projected 



SEP 4 1913 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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